Recorded as Gartary, Gartery, Gerterie, Gertray, and possibly others, this is a rare surname. It is not apparently recorded in the registers of the city of London, where an estimated 98% of all surnames of the British Isles were recorded in the period before the year 1600, until 1691 when Mary Gertray married John Masters at the famous church of St Martins in the Field, Westminster on June 2nd of that year, whilst a more recent recording is that of Alfred Gartery who married Jane Knight at St Mathews, Bethnal Green, on April 13th 1876. We believe that the current spelling or spellings may be variations of some other English name such as the rare locational name Gartree or Gartray, from the Roman Road of that name that runs through the city of Leicester. If not it may have been a "foreign" import, and if so almost certainly from France at the time of the famous Huguenots, or protestant refugees, who came to Britain in great numbers. These people were often given "sounds like" spellings of their original name, but if this the case we have not been able to establish any possible link name. Our view is that it is English, almost certainly locational, and if not developed from Gartree, is possibly from a "lost" medieval hamlet called "garth re" or similar, and meaning a paddock or small farm by a river.

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