Gurney Genealogy Library Updated 15 July 2026 by Allen Gurney

These research notes are provided as-is and contain supplementary working research.

John Gurney Candidate — Aylesbury / Buckinghamshire (Candidate A)

Alternative-candidate research for John Gurney-1 of Braintree, Massachusetts (G13). This file holds the detailed working research kept out of the main G13 research companion; the published argument is the John Gurney case file. Standing: ELIMINATED (~1-2%) — the Stewkley baptism 1602/3 → Bierton marriage 1628 to Alice Oliffe → 1639-1653 Aylesbury family group → 1641 cert of residence Aylesbury-to-Northants → 1650 Walgrave (Northants) tenancy together establish continuous English residence incompatible with the emigrant’s New England career.

Candidate A Aylesbury family group (FS-verified)

FamilySearch England, Births and Christenings, 1538-1975 returns four directly relevant Candidate A children at Saint Mary, Aylesbury, all with father John Gurney:

  • Sarah Gurney, baptized 22 August 1639
  • Daniell Gurney, baptized 26 December 1645 (FS ID JWN5-W5B, attached tree MSRS-B8Z)
  • Jonathan Gurney, baptized 22 November 1647 (FS ID JMBC-P2G, attached tree LBKR-M1H)
  • Hannah Gurney, baptized 12 November 1653

The 1639-1653 family group at Saint Mary Aylesbury is incompatible with the colonial John Gurney’s continuous New England career (Weymouth fine June 1641; Wilson v. Faxon deposition 1653; Braintree death 1662/3). Candidate A is therefore the Aylesbury John, not the MA emigrant. Combined with the 1628 Bierton with Broughton marriage to Alice Oliffe, the repo-internal 1641 TNA E 115/180/113 cert of residence Aylesbury to Northants, and the 1650 Walgrave Northants tenancy, the Candidate A elimination is effectively complete. The Stewkley 1603 baptism is now confirmed at primary-index level through FamilySearch England Births and Christenings (FS ID JMRS-DX6); the Stewkley Dickson/Putnam 1897 register remains useful for siblings, parents, later appearances, and burial context rather than as the highest discriminating pull for Candidate A.[1]

A separate FS Records entry surfaces John Gurney + Anne Cowheard, married 25 Oct 1638, Saint Mary, Aylesbury (FS ID N2TD-Z9Z, attached tree M37F-R5D). Either this is a separately documented Aylesbury John, or Candidate A remarried at Aylesbury after Alice Oliffe died, with the 1639-1653 Aylesbury children documented under the second marriage. Mother field is unindexed on the FS Records children entries, so the marriage-to-children link cannot be proven from FS alone. Retain as a Candidate A wife-uncertainty note rather than a controlling fact.

A FamilySearch England, Births and Christenings filter for father John Gurney at Aylesbury surfaces an additional 16 December 1638 son John Gurney baptism not previously documented in the case file. The 1638 baptism either extends Candidate A’s family group earlier by one year (placing a son John Jr. about 10 years after the 1628 Bierton marriage to Alice Oliffe and about 10 months before the indexed Sarah 1639) or identifies a second contemporaneous Aylesbury John Gurney father. Mother field is unindexed on the 1638 record, so the marriage-to-child link cannot be proven from FS alone. Either reading independently reinforces, rather than weakens, Candidate A’s effective elimination.[2]

FS Tree profile LT9Z-KQ1 (colonial John Gurney)

A FamilySearch Tree search for John Gurney born 1600-1610 in England with spouse Mary surfaced profile LT9Z-KQ1 (“John Gurney, 21 Feb 1603 - 16 Mar 1663, born Bury Saint Edmunds Suffolk, died Braintree Norfolk Massachusetts”). Treat the tree profile as research context only, not as a citable source record. The attached primary indexed record that matters for Candidate A is the FamilySearch England Births and Christenings entry for Jhon Gurney, son of Jhon Gurney, christened 21 February 1603 at Stewkley, Buckinghamshire (FS ID JMRS-DX6).[1]

The tree profile is internally inconsistent: it states a Bury St Edmunds, Suffolk birthplace, matching Banks’s manuscript-based attribution, while attaching the Stewkley, Buckinghamshire baptism source that belongs to the Candidate A line. That conflation is the same problem this case file has been disentangling: the Stewkley baptism, the Banks Bury St Edmunds attribution, and the Massachusetts John cannot simply be merged.

The remaining LT9Z-KQ1 attached sources are mostly already represented in the G13 companion or in the case file source system: Pope’s Pioneers of Massachusetts, History of Weymouth, Massachusetts town/vital material, Find a Grave, and Banks’s Topographical Dictionary. The Puritan Great Migration Project attachment does not add a new academic source chain and should not be carried as an open lead unless a primary source behind it surfaces.

One attached item does create a parked Bucks lead: a Medmenham, Buckinghamshire parish-register item titled The Parsons and Parish Registers of Medmenham, Buckinghamshire, with user note “Richard gurney marriage.” The FamilySearch image was restricted in this pass, but F. T. Wethered’s 1898 printed register is retrievable on Internet Archive. Medmenham is in southeast Buckinghamshire, about 30 miles from Stewkley, and the “Richard gurney marriage” note could point to a son of Candidate A or to an unrelated Bucks Richard. Keep it as a parked source-pull lead, not as evidence yet.

A second derivative-tree non-lead is the Ancestry user tree “Miner/Stemple/Flood/Hazeltine Family Tree,” which attributes the maiden name “Richards” to the colonial John’s wife Mary and gives son Richard a 1630 birth at “Weymouth, Norfolk, Massachusetts, USA.” The tree has no primary-record citation for the Richards surname; treat alongside the LT9Z-KQ1 Puritan Great Migration Project entry as a non-lead unless a primary source for the Richards surname surfaces.

Bucks Gurney household map (Findmypast indexes)

A walk of the Buckinghamshire Marriage Index, Buckinghamshire Burial Index, and Buckinghamshire Baptism Index reveals at least five distinct seventeenth-century Bucks John Gurney households contemporary with the colonial John Gurney’s New England career:

  • Candidate A - John Gurney + Alice Oliffe, married 24 Apr 1628, Bierton with Broughton (Bucks Archives PR16/1/1Q p. 30). No Bucks-indexed children of this marriage; family chronology continues with TNA E 115/180/113 (1641 cert of residence Aylesbury to Northants) and 1650 Walgrave Northants tenancy. The wife’s surname Oliffe rewrites the older case-file “Alice Collindridge” identification.
  • John Gurney + Elizabeth at East Claydon, children Elinor 1632 and Samuel 1636 (Bucks Baptism Index). John Gurney of this household was buried at East Claydon 17 Apr 1654 (Bucks Burial Index, Bucks Archives PR51/1/1). Separate from Candidate A.
  • John Gurney + Elizabeth at Chesham, children Andtr and Martha (Bucks Baptism Index, register range 1576-1682). John Gurney burials at Chesham in July 1672 and on 11 June 1678 (Bucks Burial Index, Bucks Archives D/A/T/42). Separate household.
  • John Gurney + Anne at Wing, children James 1650 and Elizabeth 1652 (Bucks Baptism Index). Separate household.
  • John Gurney + Mary at Cublington, son Isaac baptized 1664 (three Bucks Baptism Index entries; possibly duplicate transcriptions). Most plausible identity for the John Gurney and son Isaac who held the Stewkley manor by 1687 and sold to Anne Robinson of Stepney in 1701 per VCH Bucks vol. 3 pp. 420-426; Cublington is about five miles SW of Stewkley. A Bucks “John + Mary” household post-dating the colonial John’s death (16 Mar. 1662/3 inventory).
  • Aylesbury, Bucks - Luke Gurney household. Four children indexed at Aylesbury 1621-1635: Thomas 1621, Elizabeth 1623, Luke 1624, Prudence 1635. Luke Gurney is a distinct Aylesbury Gurney patriarch separate from Candidate A’s John Gurney + Alice Oliffe (1638-1653 children at Saint Mary Aylesbury), the second 1638 Aylesbury John who married Anne Cowheard, and Edward Gurny (1660s). Luke is not a John Gurney father, so the household does not appear in the case file’s §8 elimination table.[3]

Additionally, Edward Gurny was a separate Aylesbury Gurney head-of-household in the 1660s: son Jon Gurny was buried 2 Feb 1665 (Bucks Archives B24) and daughter Ann Gurny was baptized in 1666 (Bucks Baptism Index). The older case-file claim “Jonathan baptized Aylesbury 22 Nov 1647 son of John” should be qualified by source: the 1665 Aylesbury Jon was son of Edward, while FamilySearch separately verifies Jonathan son of John at Saint Mary Aylesbury in 1647.[4]

Bucks Gurney marriage cluster, 1660-1685 (Phillimore vol. I)

Phillimore Buckinghamshire Parish Registers: Marriages, vol. I, Edlesborough section, prints a tight cluster of Gurney marriages in the second half of the seventeenth century:

  • Wm. Gurney & Martha Halsey, 1660
  • Joh. Gurney & Mary Kidgell, 1661
  • Saml. Gurney, of Bierton, & Elizab. Bunce, of Padbury, 1662
  • Tho. Gurney, of Hockliffe, & Frances Norman, of Houghton Regis, 1680
  • Geo. Hill, of Chesham, & Mary Gurney, 1685

The 1661 John-and-Mary marriage is materially incompatible with the colonial John Gurney-1: the colonial John buried his first wife Mary at Braintree on 20 September 1661 and married Grizzell Fletcher on 12 November 1661 at Braintree. Either this Edlesborough John is the same person as Candidate A, in which case Candidate A is eliminated outright by the 1661 Bucks marriage, or he is a separately documented Bucks John Gurney with a Mary wife, in which case he depletes the residual “Unknown other origin” bucket by accounting for one more Bucks “John + Mary” household. The cluster also corroborates the 1642 Bucks Contributions for Ireland reading of a continuing Edlesborough yeoman Gurney presence and is consistent with VCH Bucks vol. 3 Edlesborough showing zero Gurney landholders at the manorial level: the Edlesborough Gurneys were yeoman, not gentry.[5]

  1. FamilySearch, “England, Births and Christenings, 1538-1975,” index entries at FS IDs JMRS-DX6 (Jhon Gurney 1603, Stewkley), JWN5-W5B (Daniell Gurney 1645), and JMBC-P2G (Jonathan Gurney 1647); Sarah Gurney 1639 and Hannah Gurney 1653 surfaced in the same Aylesbury-John-father search. Source ID: fs-england-births-christenings. ↩︎ ↩︎

  2. FamilySearch, “England, Births and Christenings, 1538-1975,” John Gurney son of John Gurney bapt. 16 December 1638 Aylesbury, Buckinghamshire. Source ID: fs-england-births-christenings. ↩︎

  3. FamilySearch, “England, Births and Christenings, 1538-1975,” four indexed children at Aylesbury, Buckinghamshire to Luke Gurney father 1621-1635; source ID fs-england-births-christenings. ↩︎

  4. Findmypast Buckinghamshire Marriage Index, Burial Index, and Baptism Index (Centre for Buckinghamshire Studies); subscription pulls executed 2026-05-09. Source IDs: findmypast-bucks-marriage-index, findmypast-bucks-burial-index, findmypast-bucks-baptism-index. ↩︎

  5. W. P. W. Phillimore and Thomas M. Blagg, eds., Buckinghamshire Parish Registers: Marriages, Volume I (London: Phillimore & Co., 1902), Edlesborough section; Internet Archive. Source ID: phillimore-bucks-marriages-vol1. ↩︎