Deroin was the son of a Métis[1] French Canadian trapper Amable Derouin and his Otoe wife.

In 1842, Deroin also married the two Métis sisters, Julia and Susée Baskette (Bousquet), who were daughters of an Otoe woman; together he had a total of eight children with them.

[1] Joseph and his brother John Deroin each received allotments of land at the Nemaha Reservation, which was established in 1830.

Joseph was murdered in 1858 by a white settler (husband of a Métis wife) in a dispute over money owed.

[1] Increasingly, white settlers were moving into Otoe and Omaha land, as well as the Nemaha Reservation, and displacing Native residents.

Residents built a brick schoolhouse in 1868, when river commerce revived after the end of the American Civil War.

Steamboats became infrequent and, with construction of a railroad spur between Nemaha and Shubert, Nebraska that bypassed St. Deroin, its economic life dried up.