♂Jean Serrette

Jean Serrette (born about 1748; buried 26 November 1803) was a Frenchman recorded as “of Bordeaux” who settled at St. Gabriel on the Mississippi, in Spanish Louisiana, and was the first of the Serrette line in Louisiana. One of the two witnesses at his wedding in 1782 was Francois Mollere, another man of Bordeaux, who was himself an ancestor of Floyd Amatus Delahorne on his father’s side; the two lines did not meet again until Floyd’s parents married, well over a century later. Jean Serrette was the third great-grandfather of Floyd Amatus Delahorne (1922–2014), through his son Antoine Serrette (1789–1848).

Origin and first marriage

His early life is known from one entry, the baptism of his son Antoine in 1791. It calls him “natural de Burdeos”, a native of Bordeaux, and names his parents as Pierre Serrette and Anne Roche, natives of that same Bordeaux; the priest wrote Pierre’s name in its Spanish form, Pedro. His birth year rests only on the age of fifty-five given at his burial. The marriage record of 1782 calls him “of Bordeaux” but, in its own words, does not give his parents. The Spanish clerks wrote his forename as Juan, and at his marriage and at his wife’s burial as Cirilo. The 1791 entry writes the family name as Cyrill, with a margin note giving the surname as Serret, so the records do not settle which form of the name was the family’s own. His son Antoine later named a son Jean Cirille.

The 1782 marriage record calls him the widower of Anna Laroque, so he had been married before. The records do not say where that first marriage took place; it may have been in France or at New Orleans.

Marriage and family

On 17 September 1782, at the church of the Ascension at Donaldsonville, he married Anne Sigur, a daughter of Laurent Sigur and Anne Roche, a family from Lorraine then settled at St. Gabriel. The witnesses were Francois Mollere and Joseph Roth.

The couple lived at St. Gabriel, in what became Iberville Parish, where their daughter Rosalie was baptized on 8 April 1787, with her grandmother Anne Roche as godmother. Their son Antoine was christened at St. Louis Cathedral^W in New Orleans on 19 September 1791, at the age of twenty-one months, so he was born about December 1789. Two more children, Henriette and Celestin, appear in the registers only at their marriages: Henriette married Magloire Dupuis at St. Gabriel on 28 June 1801, with two men of the Sigur family as witnesses, and Celestin married Reine Sophie Leblanc in 1816.

Anne Sigur was buried at St. Gabriel on 14 November 1797, leaving Jean a widower for the second time, with young children; Antoine was seven.

Death

Jean Serrette was buried at St. Gabriel on 26 November 1803, aged fifty-five by the register’s account. His son Antoine was then about thirteen. On 26 January 1807 his estate was sold at Iberville, and the sale included ten enslaved people.

Notes

The register’s entry for Rosalie gives her birth as 29 February 1787, a date that did not exist; either the day or the year is a slip.

The 1791 baptism of Antoine

The entry is in the baptism register of St. Louis Cathedral, New Orleans, for 1786–1796, page 160, number 870. It is printed in Earl C. Woods and Charles E. Nolan, Sacramental Records of the Roman Catholic Church of the Archdiocese of New Orleans, volume 5, page 94. It is the only record that names Jean Serrette’s parents. It calls Jean “natural de Burdeos” and his parents “naturales del mismo Burdeos expresado”. The father’s name is written Pedro Cyrill, and the family surname Cyrill, with a margin note giving the surname as Serret. The records do not settle which spelling was the family’s own.

The 1807 estate sale

The Louisiana Slave Database, compiled by Gwendolyn Midlo Hall, records the estate sale of 26 January 1807 at Iberville under the name “John Serrell”, the form used in that English-language act. It gives the ten enslaved people sold and the buyers, Magloire Dupuis and Joseph Mollere Jr.