Serenus Warren Carter portrait

Serenus was born 23 Feb 1847 in Lexington, Richland, Ohio. As a youth Serenus' ambition was to get an education. The story, passed on in the family, was that when the Civil War was declared he saw an opportunity to acquire money for an education. He waited until he was 16 so that he could be hired to take the place of a draftee. Serenus was paid between six and eight hundred dollars. There is no official documentation of this story, the official documentation begins in 1865. He Enrolled at Mansfield, Richland County Ohio, Feb 16, 1865, as a private in Company A, 187th regiment, Ohio Infantry Volunteers, in the service of the United States in the Civil War. Honorably discharged in Macon, Ga, on Jan 20, 1866. Served in the First Brigade, Second Division, Army of the Cumberland.


He seemed to have a touch of wanderlust, because he moved to Bement, Illinois, abt. 1874, to Gallion, Ohio abt. 1880, to Sullivan Illinois abt. 1885, to Nickelton, Missouri abt. 1894, to St. Paul, Arkansas 1899, Linville, Johnson County, Arkansas, 190?. During the 1881 Oklahoma land rush Serenus was a civil engineer surveying for David L. Payne.

He married Mary Elizabeth Atchison, 07 Feb 1875.


He married Barbara Bruner in 1881, in St. Paul Arkansas, and their six children were born in nearby Mountain Top Arkansas. The family moved from Arkansas to Finley, Oklahoma by covered wagon in 1919. They moved to escape malarial mosquitos.

He was appointed Justice of the Peace in Finley.