Recorded as Fawdrey, Fawdery, Fawdry, Fowdery, Fawdree, Fawdrie, as well as Vaudre, Vaudry, Vawdrey, Vaudrey, Vaudery, Vaudaron and others, this is a surname of French origins. It is locational from places in France called Gaudon or Gaudry, also recorded as Vaudron and Vaudry. What is not clear is when the surname was first introduced into the British Isles. We do not appear to have recordings from the Norman era in the centuries after the famous conquest of England in 1066, but these may exist in ancient unpublished charters and rolls. What we do have is from the Elizabethan period after about 1580 when Huguenot protestant refugees fleeing France to avoid persecution by the Roman Catholics start to appear in surviving church recordings. These include examples such as David Vaudrey in the register of the French Church, Threadneedle Street, in 1595, John Fawdry and his wife Rebecca at Putney on September 17th 1643, and in France Joseph Vaudrey at Gondreville, Meurthe-et-Moselle, on February 16th 1721. Early French records are rare compared with those of the British Isles. Most were destroyed by the Revolutionaries of 1792, who regarded them as instruments of the secret police.

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