The name is sometimes spelled "d'Hery" and some sources claim they originated in the Spanish Basque region.

The family can be traced back to master shoemaker Nicolas Déry (died between 1679 and 1681) and his wife Élisabeth Bertrand, who were both born in the 1620s and were married probably in 1656 in Paris (both were natives of that city). Evidently their son Maurice was born there in 1657, and accompanied them when they departed for Québec in 1669. They were living in Charlesbourg in August 1676, when Maurice signed a marriage contract with fourteen-year-old Madeleine Philippeau (daughter of Claude, and of Jeanne Énard). The marriage took place in November 1678, and Maurice Déry died in Château-Richer in December 1724. Château-Richer is still a small town, on the St Lawrence; the painting above by Claude Simard was done in the 1990s.

Madeleine Déry gave birth to eleven children between 1681 and 1707. She died in December 1748. The children were: Angélique (married Claude Trépannier); Élisabeth (married Jean-Baptiste Rochereau); Joseph (married Marie-Anne Voyer); Louis (married Élisabeth Gagnon and Marie-Anne Florent); Madeleine (married Charles Auclair); Marie (married Germain Magnan); Marie-Jeanne (married Jean-Bernard Renaud and then Pierre Bérard dit Lepine, see below); Marie-Thérèse (married Pierre Renaud and then Jean-Baptiste Chrétien); Maurice (married Thérèse Morisseau, Jeanne Girard and Marie-Françoise Vanasse); and one other, stillborn.

Marie-Jeanne Déry was married twice. Her first husband was Jean-Bernard Renaud, by whom she had nine children; the marriage lasted from 1698 until he died in 1716; she soon married Pierre-Louis Bérard dit Lepine (died 1766) and had at least one more child, Marie-Angélique (June 1717) before she died in 1723, aged probably 42. This daughter married Jacques-Jean Valois in 1750. Two of Marie-Jeanne's daughters by her first husband also married Bérards; Marie-Thérèse married her stepfather's brother Jean-François.