Welcome to the Laberee family web site. If your last name is Laberee, Labaree, or something very similar then you most likely descended from Peter Laberee 1724-1803 and Ruth Putnam 1720-1810 from Salem, MA and later Charlestown, NH.
Nothing is currently known about whom Peter’s parents are or if he had any siblings. Please let me know if you have any information on his family or even theories as to the original French spelling of Laberee.
Some possible names that Peter may have descended from are:
Laborie
Laboree
Laborier
Labrie
Labree
Notable Ancestors – Several interesting historical facts including the story of Indian capture and French captivity during King George’s War
Find Ancestry – Resources to lookup how you tie in to the Laberee family tree
Contribute – Provide additional Genealogy information or research assistance
Image and Document Library – Browse Images and Documents
Hi Todd,
Neat site. My grandfather, Waymer Laberee of Bulwer, Quebec, spent a good deal of his life researching the Laberee family tree, culminating in a book. Do you have a copy of it?
Best,
Karen Laberee
Victoria, BC
Karen,
I don’t have a copy. Until now the only Laberee family history book I was aware of was Jane Labaree’s from 1912. I’d love to get a copy. I’ll send you a personal message with my address.
Thanks!
I use to swim in Waymer Laberee’s pond when I was a little girl in Birchton,Quebec while visiting my Grandparents. His cottage and pond are still there as of 2010.
I’m 76 now, so it was many many years ago.
See if the Compton County Museum in Eaton Corner, Quebec has the book you both are loooking for. The Director there is a walking encylopedia and so gracious and accomoding.
This French website offers a number of interesting candidates as alternate spellings of Labaree, as well as a map indicating where bearers of the name in question are most frequently found. “Labaree” could very well be a corruption of one of these names under “L” http://www.nom-famille.com/commencant-par-l/tous.html
Thank you Jenifer. What a great page. It will be fun to look for other French names that “sound like†Laberee. I wish I would have taken French instead of Spanish so I had some sense of the language.
Hi Todd,
Lucky for me, I have taken French (mandatory in Canada), but part of the mystery is how English speakers contemporary to the original Labarees might have (mis)pronouced the name. We all know how immigrants at Ellis Island had their names on documentation altered by officials who could not make sense of the surnames in the original language. It is entirely possible that the same thing happened here — especially if the original Labarees were not particularly literate or punctilious about spelling.
It might be useful to use the above site to map promising candidates against locations known to be Huguenot centres, areas corresponding to modern Aquitaine and Poitou-Charentes. Peter Labaree was Huguenot, yes? Otherwise his family would have settled in New France (Quebec) I presume. Louis XIV did not want non-Catholics in Quebec, and there were plenty of French Calvinist refugees in New England at the time…