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.

During the 1881 Oklahoma land rush Serenus was a civil engineer surveying for David L. Payne.

He married Mary Elizabeth Atchison, 07 Feb 1875. They had five children. She Died in 1900.

He married Barbara Bruner in 1901, in St. Paul, Arkansas, and their six children were born in nearby Mountain Top, Arkansas. My father was their youngest child. The family moved from Arkansas to Finley, Oklahoma by covered wagon in 1919. They moved to escape malarial mosquitos.

Serenus was appointed Justice of the Peace in Finley.

Serenus W Carter