♂Leonidas Paterne Serrette

Leonidas Paterne Serrette (15 April 1826 – after 1865) was a son of Celestin Serrette and Reine Sophie Leblanc of the Baton Rouge Catholic parishes. He was a first cousin of Firmin Serrette (born 1818), the great-grandfather of Floyd Amatus Delahorne (1922–2014); their fathers, Celestin and Antoine Serrette, were brothers who each married a sister of the Leblanc family.

Early life

He was born on 15 April 1826 and was baptized at St. Joseph Church, Baton Rouge, on 2 July 1829, with Assem Grange and Coralie Dupuy as sponsors. He was three years old at his baptism, which came three months after that of his younger brother Jean Baptiste Leadore. A third brother, Octave Rieul, had likewise been baptized as a small child rather than an infant. Between the three of them the brothers carried an unusual run of names: Leonidas recalling the Spartan king who died at Thermopylae, Paterne an early bishop-saint of Avranches, and Rieul a bishop-saint of Senlis.

Marriage

On 31 October 1865 he married Marie Leontine Lejeune, daughter of Leon Lejeune and Eleonore Daigre, at St. John the Baptist Church, Brusly, with U. E. Leray, M. Lemoine and Armantine Lejeune as witnesses. The marriage register gives his father’s surname plainly as “Serrett”; the family’s earlier Baton Rouge baptisms, published under the heading “Ferret, Cerret,” had recorded the father only as “Celestin,” so this later record is what ties the 1820s children to the Serrette name. No record of any children of the marriage, nor of his own death, has been found.

Notes

His father’s surname is uncertain before the 1865 marriage record; the published Baton Rouge baptismal entries of the 1820s give only his father’s given name.