And You Said Your Name Is What?

or, How Guédry Has Evolved Into So Many Variants

by Marty Guidry

Have you ever searched genealogical records and discovered that your family surname changes over time?  Many a genealogist has acquired countless gray hairs trying to sort out variants of his surname and ensure that he researches all of these variants.

For most families the surname variants are rather straightforward. They often result from poor spelling and the less restrictive attitude of long ago - where if it sounded right, it was okay. Spelling really didn’t matter. For example, the Acadian surname Breau often was written Brot, Brau, Brault, Bro and Breaux over the past 200 years. Most of these variants survive today in various localities.

The surname Guédry likewise has several “spelling” variants including Guedry, Guidry, Gaidry, Guildry and Gidry; however, there are several other variants as Jeddry, Jedry, Labine, LaBean and Lledri that have roots elsewhere. Often someone asks me, “If my name is Labine, how am I related to the Guédry family?” It is not a difficult answer if you know the history of our family.

Obviously, with modern means of transportation and relocations due to jobs, during the 20th century our family members have moved throughout the United States and Canada and even to other parts of the world. The analysis below will discuss where pockets of Guédry surname variants are found today and how variants in the surname may have developed. It would be impracticable to identify every location where a variant of the Guédry surname occurs today. Most folks of our family, however, can trace their variant of the Guédry surname to one of the locations below.

Let’s explore how our distinctive Guédry surname has changed and how we are all related.

A study of extant records of the 17th and 18th century strongly indicates that the original spelling of our surname was Guédry .

To the best of my knowledge the surname Guédry is no longer used in North America.

The name Guédry apparently has German origins being derived from one of several old German words: “wido” meaning forests or woods, “waido” meaning hunting place, park or forest or “wid” meaning wood in the sense of a weapon. Note that the old German “W” sounds similar to the French “Gui” as, for example, the German name Wilhelm is Guillaume in French.

Some researchers believe the Guédry name may have originated at Cuébris - a commune in the town of Puget- Théniers in the Alpes-Maritime Department, Provence-Alpes-Côte d’Azur Region of France. It is 18 miles northwest of Nice, France. Today there is a Hotel le Guitry in Nice, France.

Other researchers believe the Guédry family emigrated from the area of Alsace- orraine near the French- German border. Today in this region is Mount Gédry located in the village of Arpenans in the Haute-Saône Department, Franche-Comté Region in eastern France about fifty miles from the German border.

Interestingly, 43 miles northwest of Paris is the village of Guitry in the Eure Department, Haute-Normandie Region of France.

Guedry, Guidry, Gaidry

The spellings Guedry, Guidry and Gaidry today occur primarily in south Louisiana and southeast Texas.

The surname Guedry , closest in spelling to the original Guédry, is used today by folks in several pockets of Louisiana. These include St. Landry Parish near Opelousas, Terrebonne Parish near Houma and Ascension Parish near Prairieville and Gonzales. Additionally, many folks with the Guedry surname live in Hardin County, Texas near Batson. Just outside Batson is the historic, well-maintained Guedry Cemetery.

Apparently Guedry resulted from folks in the early 19th century dropping the accent acute from Guédry. Since many of the Acadians of that day could not write, non-French government clerks and priests may have been responsible for omitting the accent acute when Guédry’s conducted business as land sales and censuses and recorded baptisms, marriages and burials.

The most common surname of our family in Louisiana and Texas is Guidry . In southern Louisiana the areas of the highest concentration of Guidry are Lafayette Parish, St. Martin Parish around Breaux Bridge and Cecilia, Acadia Parish near Rayne, Crowley and Church Point, throughout Terrebonne Parish and Lafourche Parish (with a large pocket along the Larose to Golden Meadow corridor), Ascension Parish near Donaldsonville and Calcasieu Parish near Lake Charles. In southeast Texas one finds pockets of Guidry’s in Jefferson County near Beaumont and Port Arthur and in Orange County near Orange.

Although proof is lacking, it appears that the surname Guidry resulted from poor penmanship in the early 19th century when the accented ‘e’ of Guédry was closed and the accent acute was reduced to a dot to form an ‘i’. The transition of Guédry to Guidry occurred slowly in the records during the first half of the 19th century in south Louisiana.

The surname Gaidry occurs in Louisiana in Terrebonne Parish near Houma and in Lafayette Parish near Lafayette. It appears to have originated in the Houma, LA area about 1872 and spread to the Lafayette, LA area in the 20th century.

Probably the surname Gaidry resulted from the ‘u’ of Guidry being closed due to poor penmanship. The first known record using the surname Gaidry was a 20 April 1872 Petition for Inventory after the death of Paul Gaidry on 27 February 1872. After 1872 we see the surname Gaidry appear regularly in a small number of church and civil records in Terrebonne Parish, LA.

Jeddry, Jedry, Jedrey, Geddry, Gedry

The surnames Jeddry, Jedry, Jedrey, Geddry and Gedry today occur principally in the St. Mary’s Bay area of Nova Scotia and the New England states of Massachusetts and Connecticut. The Jeddry, Jedry and Jedrey surnames thrive in the Digby County, Nova Scotia communities of St. Alphonse and Salmon River while the Geddry and Gedry surnames dominate in the community of Meteghan less than five miles distant.

In the late 1800’s and early 1900’s many Acadians from Nova Scotia immigrated to New England to find work. Certainly they intended to earn money and return to their homes in Nova Scotia; however, many remained permanently in their new homes. Massachusetts and Connecticut attracted a large number of the Acadians including both Jeddry and Geddry families.

The Jeddry, Jedry, Jedrey, Geddry and Gedry families descend from Augustin Guédry and Marie Jeanson who founded a small community on St. Mary’s Bay called Chéticamp. Later the name of this community was changed to St. Alphonse. Augustin Guédry’s name was often spelled Augustin Gedree probably due to English clerks writing the name as they heard it spoken. As the children and grandchildren of Augustin began to register their lands and conduct other business with the English government, their names gradually evolved into Jeddry, Jedry, Jedrey, Geddry and Gedry - again because the English clerks wrote the names phonetically as they heard them spoken.

Although Labine initially appears to be an entirely different surname than Guédry, the Labine and LaBine surnames are variants of Guédry. The Labine surname originated in the St. Alexis area near Montréal, Canada and is now found throughout the lower parts of the Québec and Ontario provinces. Family preference apparently determines whether the Labine or LaBine variant is used.

The Labine (LaBine) family descends from Pierre Guédry dit Labine, son of Claude Guédry and Marguerite Petitpas. Jean-Baptiste Augustin Guédry dit Labine, son of Pierre Guédry dit Labine and Marguerite Brasseau, was deported from Acadia to Boston, Massachusetts in November 1755 and remained with his growing family in the Boston area until 1766 when he was allowed to resettle near Montréal, Canada. In 1767 he established his family at St-Alexis near Montréal. In the late 1700’s several of his children and grandchildren began calling themselves Labine and Guildry rather than Guédry with the Labine surname being derived from the ‘dit’ name of their ancestor Pierre Guédry dit Labine. The families prospered, grew and gradually resettled westward. Today the Labine (LaBine) surname is found throughout the southern regions of the Québec and Ontario provinces.

Like the Labine surname, the Guildry surname originated in the St-Alexis area near Montréal, Canada. Today one finds Guildrys in areas near Montréal and Québec.

The Guildry family also descends from Pierre Guédry dit Labine, son of Claude Guédry and Marguerite Petitpas in the same manner as the Labine (LaBine) family. Jean-Baptiste Augustin Guédry dit Labine, son of Pierre Guédry dit Labine and Marguerite Brasseau, was deported from Acadia to Boston, Massachusetts in November 1755 and remained with his growing family in the Boston area until 1766 when he was allowed to resettle near Montréal, Canada. In 1767 he established his family at St-Alexis near Montréal. In the late 1700’s several of his children and grandchildren began calling themselves Guildry and Labine rather than Guédry. The exact way that the Guildry surname derived from the Guédry surname is not known. The number of Guildry families is much smaller than that of Labine families and they are concentrated in the Montréal and Québec areas.

The LaBean surname originated in Bay County, Michigan and today the majority of LaBean family members still reside in Bay County and the nearby counties of Arenac, Gladwin and Genesee.

One of only two children of Jean Baptiste Guildry dit Labine and Angélique Rivet to survive beyond 21 years of age, Jean Baptist Guildry dit Labine Jr. was born at St. Jacques de Montcalm, Québec on 31 July 1825. As a young man not yet 15 years of age, he left the Québec area and headed southwest toward Michigan. By 1840 he had settled in Monroe County in southeast Michigan. There on 7 November 1848 he married Edwidge Senever dit Lamarbre, who also had immigrated to Michigan from St. Jacques de Montcalm, Québec.

Over the next 27 years Jean Baptiste and Edwidge had 17 children in Monroe County - eleven of whom survived childhood. During this time Jean Baptiste Guildry dit Labine changed his name to Jean Baptiste Labine. In the early 1880’s he moved his family north from Monroe County to Pinconning Township in Bay County, MI. About 1888 Jean Baptiste Labine died at Pinconning Township. The children prospered in Bay County and purchased property for their farms and homes. As they registered their lands and conducted other government business, they saw their surname change from Labine to LaBean . Apparently the English-speaking government clerks wrote the name as they heard it. The ‘i’ of Labine is pronounced as a long ‘e’ in French so ‘bine’ became ‘bean’ and Labine became LaBean. The new spelling stuck and today this branch of our Guédry family carries the surname LaBean.

“Extinct” Variants (Lledri, Lledre, Yedri)

There have been several other variants of the surname Guédry that have not survived to the present day - the most unusual being Lledri (Lledre, Yedri).

In December 1767 Pierre Guédry and his young wife Marguerite Dupuis with their daughter Marie stepped aboard the “Jane” at Port Tobacco, MD for their journey to a new home in Louisiana. The Spanish scribe recorded a manifest of the Acadians disembarking at New Orleans in February 1768. As Pierre Guédry pronounced his name “Guédry” in his fluent French tongue, the Spanish scribe diligently wrote “Lledri” - the sounds he heard Pierre saying. This looks strange to an English speaker; however, the “Ll” in Spanish sounds similar to the English ‘Y’. Thus the ‘Gué’ sounds pronounced in French sounds somewhat similar to the “Lle’ in Spanish. The ‘dry’ sound in French sounds similar to ‘dree’ in English and ‘dri’ in Spanish.

The Lledri (Lledre, Yedri) appeared only on a few early documents recorded by Spanish clerks and priests and never was used by the Guédry family as their surname.

Other Variants There are many other variants of the Guédry surname; however, each is similar in spelling to one of the surnames above. These include Guedrie, Guedris ( Guedry ); Guidiry, Guidery, Guidrey, Guidrie, Guiddry, Guiddery, Guiedry, Guiedri, Guitry, Gidry, Gidrie ( Guidry ); Guildrie ( Guildry ); Gaidrie, ( Gaidry ); Geddrie, Gettry ( Geddry ); Gedree, Gedrie ( Gedry ); Jeddrie, Jeddrey ( Jeddry ); Jederie, Jedrey, Jedrie ( Jedry ); Labeen, Labene ( Labine ) and LaBeau, Labeau ( LaBean ).