Claude Olivier Guédry dit Grivois dit Laverdure

• Notes:
  • From the early Acadian censuses of 1686, 1698 and 1708, it is estimated that Claude Guédry was born about 1648. Although the Census of 1686 provides a birth year of approximately 1653, the Censuses of 1698 and of 1708 both indicate his birth year as 1648.
  • There are many theories as to where Claude was born, but no records have been found to support any of these theories.

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Famille de/Family of Claude GUÉDRY dit GRIVOIS & Marguerite PETITPAS

GUÉDRY dit GRIVOIS, Claude (.. GUÉDRY & .. ), né/born vers/about 1648 (rec. 1698), décédée/died après/after 1723-01-09 Mirliguèche auj. Lunenberg (Nouvelle-Écosse/Nova Scotia), Canada

• mariés/married vers/about 1681, de/from .. (Acadie)

PETITPAS, Marguerite (Claude & Catherine BUGARET,

née/born vers/about 1661 (rec. 1671) ou/or 1658 (rec. 1698) Port-Royal (Acadie), décédée/died après/after 1705-09-08 Mirliguèche auj. Lunenberg (Nouvelle-Écosse/Nova Scotia), Canada

1) Augustin, marié/married vers/about 1721 Jeanne HÉBERT
2) Françoise, mariée/married vers/about 1725 Jean LEJEUNE
3) Jean Baptiste, marié/married avant/before rec/census 1708 Madeleine MIUS D'AZY
4) Marie Josèphe, née/born vers/about 1692 (rec. 1698), décédée/died avant/before 1752-02-02 Pisiquit (Acadie), mariée/married vers/about 1715 Philippe DOIRON
5) Paul, marié/married vers/about 1720 Anne MIUS D'AZY
6) Pierre, marié/married vers/about 1722 Marguerite BRASSEAU

"Ancestors Found," in ACADIAN GENEALOGY EXCHANGE, vol. 24, no. 4 ()ct 1995), p. 96. Claude GUEDRY dit LAVERDURE, wife Mareguerite [sic] PETITPAS and his family lived with the Indians and Me/tis (half-breeds) in the region of La Heve. The census of 1686 shows LAVERDURE, age 35, with wife and one child at Mistigouaiche (Mirliquesh, now Lunenburg, NS). The 1698 census shows the family at Port Royal and lists him as a farmer with ten cows and some sheep. They had left Port Royal by the time of the censuses of 1699 and 1701. In 1701 he was definitely at LaHeve and he had two of his children baptized at Mirligoueche.

!CHILDREN-CHRISTENING: Recorded at St. John River at Menagoneck, "Jeanne GUIDRY - daughter of Claude Guidry called la Verdure and Kesk8a,* Indian. Sponsors: Claude Petitpas and Jeanne de la Tour, wife of Martin." (DeVille, ACR, 1.) *The figure "8" was used by French priests to indicate a sound in the Indian language.

!CENSUS: 1686, Mirliguaiche, Acadia, age 35, no other name given. "Sa femme" is only indication for wife, except for age 25. And one "Enfant." They were one of only 2 families living at Mirliguaiche in 1686.

GEDCOM Note

!Claude and his family lived in Mirlaigueche, Acadia at the time of the baptism of his last two children 1701-1703. He lived among the Micmac Indians. He was a courier DeBois and hunted, trapped and treded with the Indians for a living.

LAFAYETTE ADVERTISER - SUNDAY, OCT 12, 1997
_________________________________________________

LEARN ALL ABOUT THE GUIDRY/GUEDRY FAMILY

LAFAYETTE - Claude Guidry was born in 1648. According to certain
historians, he was born in France and came to Acadia around 1671. Other
historians claim that he was born in Acadia, probably near Mirligoueche in
the region of Cap-de-Sable, and was the grandson of a settler who came to
the New World with the Baron de Poitincourt in 1610. According to this
version, the unnamed progenitor of the Guidry family stayed in Port-Royal
following the death of the Baron and moved, along with Charles de la Tour,
from Port-Royal folowing the death of the Baron and moved to the Cap-de
Sable region in 1624. These men mostly took MicMac brides and established
the mostly metis community of Mirligoueche. Records show that Claude
Guidry was at Mirligoueche in 1677.

Claude Guidry married Marguerite Petitpas sometime around 1681 at
Port-Royal. She was the widow of Martin Dugas, the son of Abraham Dugas
and Marguerite Doucet. She had one son, Abraham, from that marriage.
Marguerite Petitpas was the daughter of Claude Petitpas, the village clerk
of Port-Royal, and Catherine Bugaret.

FIVE CHILDREN BORN

Claude Guidry and Marguerite Petitpas established themselves at
Mirligoueche. Their first five children were sons, Claude (b. 1682),
Jean-Baptiste (b. 1684), Charles (b. 1686), Alexis (b. 1688) and Augustin
(b. 1690). Their first daughter, Marie-Josephte was born in 1692, followed
by four more sons, Claude (b. 1694), Joseph (b. 1695), Pierre (b. 1697),
Paul (b. 1701). Another daughter, Francoise, was born 1704.

Most of the Guidry sons adopted the surname Grivoye or Grivois. Only
Pierre, who married Marguerite Brasseau in 1720 at Port-Royal, continued to
be known by the name Guidry or Guildry. Marguerite was the daughter of
Pierre Brasseau and Gabrielle Forest. They also lived first at
Mirligoueche, but later moved to Ile-Royale or Cape Breton Island in 1750,
in order to escape the increasing harassment of the British. His entire
family, with the exception of his two oldest sons, Jean-Baptiste (b. 1721)
and Pierre (b. 1724) accompanied him to Ile-Royale. In addition to
Jean-Baptiste and Pierre, there were Marie-Josephte (b. 1722), Charles
(b.1725 or 1726), Marguerite (b. 1726 or 1727), Heleine (b.1729), Anselme
(b. 1730), Joseph (b. 1732), Jean-Femilien (b.1735), augustin (b. 1740),
and Aniez (b. 1742).

It is known that Jean-Baptiste Guidry (m. 1753 Marie Piquot, m. 1799
Marie-Angelique Marois), a son of Pierre Guidry and Marguerite Brasseu, was
deported to Massachusetts. They eventually managed to make their way to
Quebec, where they settled in the region of LAssomption in a community of
exiled Acadians.

Of these children of Pierre Guidry and Marguerite Brasseau, Charles is of particular interest to the Guidrys of Louisiana. Charles married Madeleine Hebert, the daughter of Jean Hebert and Marie LeBlanc in 1745. In 1750, they emigrate to the Pointe-a-la-Jeunesse on Ile-Royale. The majority of his brothers and sisters, along with their families, accompanied him. In
1758, Charles and his family were deported by the British to France.
Madeleine died around that time, perhaps at sea. In 1761, he remarried at
Saint-Souliac, France, to another deported Acadian, Agnes Bourg, the
daughter of Joseph Bourg and Francoise Dugas. They came to Louisiana in 1785.

A Guidry family was also among the earliest Acadian families to arrive in Louisiana in early 1765. Joseph Guidry probably arrived with the group led by Joseph dit Beausoleil Broussard. Joseph Guedry went first to Attakapas country, but he soon moved to present day Ascension Parish along the Mississippi River. He married Elisabeth Comeau there and began a long line of descendants, most of whom settled on small farms on the east bank of the Mississippi in St. James Parish.

Two Guidry families arrived in 1768 from Maryland, where they had been exiled for 13 years. One family was led by Pierre Guidry and his wife,
Marguerite Dupuy. The other was led by the widow Guidry, Anne Dupuy. She
was the widow of Pierre Guidry's brother, Jean. Both families were
initially sent to Natchez, but were later found in present day Ascension
Parish. One of the sons of Jean Guidry and Anne Dupuy, Firmin (m. 1786
Marguerite Landry), began a long line of successful antebellum farmers
along the Mississippi River. Another of their sons, Jean (m. 1785
Marie-Madeleine Breaux), left and settled in the Attakapas country.

Pierre remarried following the death of Marguerite Dupuy, first to Claire Babin in 1769 and again to Marguerite Miller in 1780. He moved to the
Attakapas, and his several sons began a long line of Guidrys in
south-central Louisiana. Pierre also amassed quite a fortune before his
death in 1825. He owned 2,000 acres in Prairie Gros Chevreuil east of the
Teche and several tracts in the Carencro and Grand Coteau areas. Pierre
had 12 sons from his second and third wives, and they gradually spread out
from the Teche country with their families into southwest Louisiana and
eventually east Texas. Some of his sons, David (m. 1878 Marie-Modeste
Borda), Onesime (m. 1826 Celeste Mouton) all amassed considerable wealth in
their own right. Still others of Pierre's sons, Joseph (m. 1793
Scholastique Hebert), Jean-Baptiste (m. 1797 Solange Hebert), and
Paul-Hypolite (m. 1800 Adelaide Duhon) all settled as small farmers near
Lafayette. Three of Paul-Hypolite's sons, namely Leufroy (m. 1822
Christine Dugas), Joachim (m. 1827 Marie Giroir), and Jean-Baptiste were
among the first Louisiana Acadians to move to Texas. Finally, another of
Pierre's sons, Oliver (m. 1791 Victoire Semer) stayed with his father at La
Pointe near present day Breaux Bridge, but his children mostly moved to
Vermillion Parish near Abbervile. Pierre's six sons with this third wife,
Marguerite Miller, all stayed along the Teche.

SEVEN FAMILIES ARRIVE

There were seven Guidry families among the group of Acadians who arrived in Louisiana from Nates in 1785. All but one of these families settled first at Manchac in what is now East Baton Rouge Parish. The largest of these families was led by Claude Guidry (m. ca. 1949 Anne Lejeune) and his
second wife, Anne Moyse. Two of the other families, headed by
Pierre-Janvier (m. 1773 Marie-Josephe Hebert) and Jean-Baptiste (m. 1774
Marguerite Hebert) later moved to Bayou LaFourche after the turn of the
century. Indeed most of Guidry families that originally settled along the
Acadian Coast of the Mississippi River eventually sold their farms to
anglophone planters and moved either to LaFourche, the Teche Country or
inland to around the region near present-day Gonzales in Ascension Parish.

The Lafourche country Guidrys mostly came from the group of Nantes
Acadians who settled first at Manchac, but one of the 1785 arrivals, Joseph
(m. Madeleine Comeaux) and his five children was sent directly to
LaFourche. Joseph was the son of the aforementioned Claude Guidry and his
first wife, Anne Lejeune. Some of the descendants of these families moved
steadily down Bayou LaFourche and others spread out into Terrebonne, Noir
and du Large. One of the sons of Claude Guidry and Anne Moyse, Olivier (m.
Henriette Bergeron) owned 1800 acres of marshland in LaFourche Parish.

The family name is most often spelled "Guidry" today, but there are also families who spell the name "Guedry." The family is concentrated in
Louisiana, with very few, if any families remaining in the Canadian
Maritime Provinces. The largest concentration of Guidrys is in the south
central parishes of Lafayette, Vermilion, St. Martin, and Iberia parishes.