A Journey to Guitry, France

by Father Mitchell Guidry

Father Mitchell Guidry Tours Italy, France
This is an excerpt from a series of articles written by Father Mitchell Guidry for
'The Gueydan Journal' (Oct. 27, 2005)

"Monday found us renting a car to drive through the countryside toward Lisieux. I discovered in a genealogy book on the Guidry family by a Bernard Geddry that there is a village about 40 miles north of Paris called "Guitry". As we know, there are different variations of surnames which happens when people leave their ancestral areas and are illiterate; they know their names, they just can't spell them and trust others (priests, government officials) to write them for them.

Whether or not the Guidry family originated in Guitry is hard to say, but it is a fascinating possibility. At any rate, we found the village of 240 people and noticed some striking similarities to our small towns here. It is agricultural, the village is a cluster of homes on some narrow winding streets surrounded by fields. I'm not certain what all is grown there, but I did see potatoes, wheat, cattle, goats, sheep and horses.

The houses are built like the old Acadian style homes, but with no front porches and the outside is stucco. I found their barns built in a similar fashion to the older barns here, the center passageway with stalls on one side, storage on the other, loft on top. To see their backyards there in the country is to see our own. Because we were there in the middle of the day, we weren't able to speak to anyone but the city hall secretary who was on her way to lunch; everything shuts down between 12 and 2 p.m.

I took a walk in the cemetery near the church and saw some names we have around Acadiana like Pitre, Godeau, Bonnet, only one grave had the Guitry name. The priest resided in another town further away, so I wasn't able to speak to him, either.

It is evident that it is a small, close knit community from the announcements on the church and city hall message boards; the town has public religious expression, a crucifix at a crossroads and a statue of the Madonna in a niche of a wall where a street forks; there was a nice little festival hall too.

I would hope to get in contact with the pastor or mayor (who is a farmer) in the near future to get some more information about the town's history.

After leaving Guitry we stopped for lunch in Fleury, visited a huge, old catherdral there, then drove on, passing through all kinds of neat little towns, to the port city of Le Havre where Fr. Bordelon's ancestors left to come to Louisiana. We had a nice view of the English Channel there and then went Southwest through Normandy toward Lisieux.” This, to me, was the jewel of our trip.”