Oscar F(rederick) Demesme, a native of France and white, enlisted on 9/13/1861 in Donaldsonville with the rank of 1st Corporal with the Donaldsonville Canonniers. The 1860 census listed him as a laborer living in New River, the 4th Ward of Ascension Parish with two older woman, both from France and one, the Widow G. Demesme, his mother. Also living with them was older brother Charles, an overseer. They moved to Acension Parish from the Laferiere Levesque Plantation in Assumption Parish that had 77 slaves, all black except for three mulatto boys born in 1850, 1851 and 1858. They were the children of a "colored" woman by the name of Sophia who later claimed to be the widow of Charles Demesme. The oldest son was named Oscar, evidently after Charles' brother the Canonnier, who was 13 at the time. The mulatto Oscar Demesme (the census list the name as Mesme, Mesmate, and Masino through the years) had seven kids with the fifth child named Oscar Frederick Demesme. The Canonnier Oscar never married and had no known children. He was killed "in the course of the melee" on the night of 4/8 at Appomattox Station, "shot through mistake by his own friends" while wearing Yankee blue on a "spy [scout] mission." A comrade noted that in the last days he was "still defiant and hopeful." There are no white Demesme descendents in Louisiana today. Interestingly, the Donaldsonville Artillery did have a free man of color serving with the battery from the time they left Donaldsonville to the battery's surrender at Appomattox. He was Louis Lefort and his name appears on the Appomattox Paroles listed in Volume 15, SHSP. He was Captain Victor Maurin's volunteer servant for the war.