♂Pierre Serrette

Pierre Serrette was a native of Bordeaux, in France, whose son Jean settled at St. Gabriel on the Mississippi, in Spanish Louisiana, and began the Serrette line there. He was the fourth great-grandfather of Floyd Amatus Delahorne (1922–2014), through his son Jean Serrette (born about 1748).

Pierre is known from a single entry, written in New Orleans, far from his own city. On 19 September 1791 Antoine, the twenty-one-month-old son of Jean Serrette and Anne Sigur, was baptized at St. Louis Cathedral^W, and the priest named all four of the child’s grandparents. Jean was “natural de Burdeos”, a native of Bordeaux, and his parents, Pierre Serrette and Anne Roche, were “naturales del mismo Burdeos expresado”, natives of that same Bordeaux. The priest wrote Pierre’s name in its Spanish form, Pedro, and Anne’s as Ana.

Notes

The record

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; his marriage in 1782 calls him “of Bordeaux” but does not name them. The entry does not say whether Pierre and Anne were still living in 1791, or whether either of them ever left France.

The name Cyrill

The priest wrote the family’s name as Cyrill: the child’s father as Juan Cyrill and his grandfather as Pedro Cyrill. A note in the margin gives the surname as Serret. The clerks of the Ascension and St. Gabriel churches likewise wrote Jean as Cirilo, at his marriage in 1782 and at his wife’s burial in 1797.