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 — Earsham, Norfolk (d. 1638)

Alternative-candidate / same-name comparator 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 as the emigrant (the Earsham testator died 1638 and his son John was a minor), but retained as a documented Waveney-valley Gurney family with the rare, traceable forename Lyon/Syon.

A previously unlogged Norfolk Gurney family, fixed by a single rich document: the will of John Gurney of Earsham (“Eursham”), Norfolk, yeoman, made 10 August 1638 (14 Charles I), registered in the Norwich-circuit will register at page 168. Full working transcription at sources/corpus_supplement/ncc-will-1638-john-gurney-earsham-working-transcription.md; page images at sources/media/ncc-will-1638-john-gurney-earsham/_local/.[1]

The family the will draws

  • Testator: John Gurney of Earsham, yeoman, sick in body, 10 Aug 1638. Held messuages, lands, and tenements at Earsham both freehold and copyhold.
  • Wife: Mary — holds the estate during the son’s minority, then a £4 yearly annuity (Annunciation and Michaelmas) in lieu of dower. (Expert verification corrected an earlier “Al[ice]” reading — the name appears twice and is legible.)
  • Son: John Gurney, a minor — takes the whole estate at fourteen, “when he may be capable to take his guardianship”; if he dies before twenty-one the remainder passes to his uncle Lyon. Born after c. 1624, so a generation younger than the emigrant John Gurney-1 (G13, b. c. 1607–12).
  • Brother: Lyon Gurney — contingent devisee if young John dies under 21, and co-executor. The forename (Lyon/Lionel) is rare and highly traceable. Reading refinement (expert image re-read, 2026-06-15): in the will-body hand the forename reads Syon/Sion, not Lyon — the opening long-S is looped and is easily misread as “Lyon.” The 1710 Sarah Gurney memorandum (quoted below) likewise has “her son Syon,” and the court-book transcripts garble it “Sion/Simon/Leon.” Treat the family forename as Syon/Sion (Lyon being the misreading), and watch the Syon↔Lyon trap when sweeping for the name.[2]
  • Brother: Robert Gurney, deceased by 1638 — his four sons, including a William Gurney and a Robert Gurney, take £5 legacies each, paid out year by year, eldest first.
  • Sister(s): legacies charged on the land (amounts partly garbled).
  • Brother-in-law: John Youngman of St Andrew’s (most plausibly Ilketshall St Andrew, immediately across the Waveney from Earsham) — co-executor.
  • Non-kin legatees: the five daughters of John Sou[t]er late of Earsham, deceased — £4 each as they come of age, with a right of entry on the land if unpaid.

The will was proved at Norwich 26 December 1639, before Mr. R. Gamon, clerk, surrogate of Clement Corbett, doctor of laws (chancellor of Norwich diocese), administration committed to the executors named in the will — so the testator died between August 1638 and late 1639. It was sealed, subscribed, and published in the presence of Edw[ard] Calvert, Christopher Jay (by mark), and Jacob Bland (by mark).[3]

The family traced forward — the Waveney Gurney network, 1690s–1818

The rare forename did its work: a “Lyon Gurney” name-probe traces the family across three further record sets.

  • Sarah Gurney of Bungay — nuncupative will, June 1710 (image-read in full). On Sunday 4 June 1710, at the house of Lyon Gurney of the parish of St Peter per Mountergate [Parmentergate] in the City of Norwich, his mother Sarah Gurney — “her habitation or dwelling was att Bungay in the County of Suffolk” — declared her will before witnesses. She had been at Lyon’s house about a month, nursing her son and his wife through a sickness, intended to return to Bungay shortly, and died of that same sickness about fifteen days later (≈ 19 June 1710), “of perfect mind & memory.” Her declared will: her son Lyon to have all her moveable goods and what money was due to her, “for to bury her”; “as for her daughter Mary, she had had enough already, So that her son Syon [Lyon] should have what she left at her death.” Witnesses subscribed 22 June 1710: Thomas Loades, a second Loades by mark, Rachel Kingston; proved at Norwich the same day, 22 June 1710, before Peter Burgess, surrogate of Thomas Tanner, S.T.P. [the antiquary, then chancellor of the diocese]. Full working transcription in sources/corpus_supplement/ncc-will-1710-sarah-gurney-bungay-nuncupative-transcription.md.[4]
  • Sarah Gurney was a sister of James Adams of Bungay, merchant — his will (31 January 1692/3) maps her family. Expert reading of the register pages resolved the 1690s will naming “my Sister Sarah Gurney['s] children”: the testator is James Adams of Bungay in the County of Suffolk, merchant, will dated “the one and thirtieth day of January in the fourth yeare of the raigne of … William and Mary … Anno Domini 1692” [1692/3]. He gives “unto John Gurney, Thomas Gurney, Lyon Gurney, and Mary Farrow, my sister Sarah Gurney’s children, five pounds apiece”; and “unto my sister Sarah Gurney the summe of six pounds by the yeare during her naturall life,” charged on his estate at Mettingham with a right of entry if unpaid. His lands at Barsham, Shipmeadow, and Mettingham (occupiers John Deveson and John Cole) go to his son-in-law Richard Nelson and daughter Margaret his wife and the heirs of her body, remainder to John Adams son of his brother Thomas Adams; Nelson (sole executor) collects the rents for a term to pay the legacies, which include £5 apiece to James Woolnough’s children (Robert, Mary, Elizabeth, Lawrence) and small sums to his brother Henry Adams’s children; £5 to the poor of Bungay; gold, plate, and linen between daughters Margaret Nelson and Elizabeth Baker. Sarah Gurney was therefore — if “sister” is blood usage — née Adams of Bungay, with an annuity from her brother from 1693 and a deathbed estate of moveables only in 1710; her children John, Thomas, Lyon, and Mary (married Farrow) match the 1710 memorandum’s son Lyon and portioned daughter Mary. (The will registered immediately before Adams’s, Mary Scamler/Scambler of Norwich, widow, 22 January 1688/9 — initially conflated with this one — proves unrelated: her will concerns Smith and Scambler kin and sons “beyond the seas.”)[5]
  • The Earsham court book 1710–1818 is swept (DGS 004389278): Lyon Gurney held Earsham copyhold from c. 1719, and the family’s land memory runs to 1811. Latin court entries of 1719–1734 carry Lyon Gurney’s active tenure (machine transcripts garble the rare forename as “my son”/“Sion”/“Simon”/“Leon”), including a close called Broadland and land on the way toward Ditchingham; “Lands late of Lyon Gurney” abuttal recitals run 1744–1811; a “Land late of Susan Gurney” recital appears in 1748; and several entries recite “one Acre of Copyhold Land of the Tenement Gurneys heretofore of John Plough [Clough?] called Hallsty” with recited years reaching back to 1642–1654 — a possible documentary chain from the eighteenth-century holdings to the 1638 testator’s messuages. (The same physical film carries Docking and Diss court records, whose Gurney cards are the nineteenth–twentieth-century Norwich banking family as estate parties — not this family.) An image read of the 1811 recital and a 1719 admission (paleography packet 15) confirms the property phrase — “one acre of Copyhold Land of the Tenement Gurneys heretofore of John Plough called Hallsty”, with the bounds (Robert Gooch N/W, Thomas King S, William Woolmer E; premises formerly of Robert Woolmer) and a visible older court of 14 October 1645 — but it does not name the original Gurney holder, and the recited 1642/1649/1654 chain was not recovered in that pass; the 1719 entry independently shows the rare forename reads Syon Gurney (consistent with the 1638 will’s brother), not Lyon, though the full Latin admission and any predecessor recital were not transcribed.[6][2]

Reading: the 1638 testator’s brother Lyon gave the family a recurring name; two generations later Sarah Gurney — sister of James Adams of Bungay, merchant, so most plausibly née Adams, and widow of Sion (Syon) Gurney of Earsham[7] — lived at Bungay with children John, Thomas, Lyon, and Mary (Farrow), and her son Lyon Gurney lived in St Peter Parmentergate, Norwich — the laceweaver Francis B’s own parish. That parish coincidence does not connect the families by blood, but it puts a Waveney-family Gurney inside the Norwich parish the project watches most closely, and it is the right thread to pull when the Parmentergate Gurneys are next reviewed.

Parish-register traces — the Syon forename and the Earsham baptisms

The family’s distinctive forename Syon (Sion / Lyon) and the 1638 testator’s household both appear in parish-register baptisms. The earliest instance of the forename is Syon Gurnie, christened 1593 at Hempnall (south Norfolk, ~10 miles from Earsham), son of a John Gurney. On the Hempnall index spelling Gurnie, that household resolves more fully: John Gurnie of Hempnall had children Henricus (1576, mother Margaret), Elizabeth (1585), John (1587), Susana (1590), Syon (1593), and Margaret (1596) — a coherent 1576–1596 set that roots the rare Syon name in the household by 1576/1593, a generation before the Earsham testator. A separate Robert Gurnie household at Hempnall (Jana 1570, mother Anna; James 1578) and a John Gurnie at Redenhall (Marie 1598, edging toward the Waveney) sit alongside it; the same Hempnall John-Gurney line recurs with later father-John children (Anna 1640, Elizabeth 1641).[8][9] At Earsham itself, the testator’s own household shows in the register: father John Gurney with sons John (1635), John (1636) and Henry (1638), and a brother Sion Gurney with a daughter Susan (1638) — corroborating the 1638 will’s “son John, a minor” and contingent-devisee brother Syon at register level.[10] What remains open is the identity of Sarah Gurney’s husband (the later-generation Lyon’s father): her children John/Thomas/Lyon/Mary fall in the Bungay/Mettingham (Suffolk) area outside FindMyPast’s Norfolk coverage, so that step needs the Suffolk registers (Ancestry).

Case relevance (G13 John Gurney emigrant)

Negative-to-comparator. The testator died in 1638 in Norfolk, so he is not the emigrant; his son John was a minor in 1638, so he is too young to be the emigrant (b. c. 1607–12). This documents a self-contained Gurney yeoman family at Earsham, south-east Norfolk (Waveney valley, by Bungay) — a different corner of the county from both the West Barsham gentry line and the East Dereham/Norwich corridor. Its distinctive markers (brother Lyon, a Robert dead by 1638 with four sons) make it easy to recognize and exclude in future sweeps. Earsham is also worth remembering as a possible reading whenever a garbled “E—sham/—ersham” Gurney place-name turns up in Norfolk records.

Open questions

  1. Probate clause and witnesses — done: proved Norwich 26 December 1639 (see the family section above).
  2. Lyon Gurney trace — the 1710 memorandum is read, the 1690s testator is identified (James Adams of Bungay; Sarah Gurney his sister), and the Earsham court book is swept. Remaining: disentangle the Earsham Sion-Gurney household(s) behind Sarah’s now-identified husband Sion (Syon) Gurney (indexed with wives Ann, Sarah, and Esther — the parish register is needed for the wife sequence and to confirm which Sion married Sarah); James Adams’s probate clause (the page after image 202); and a full Latin transcription of the 1719 Syon Gurney admission (the image was read — it confirms the forename Syon and the Hallsty/Tenement-Gurneys recital, but the full admission and any predecessor chain are untranscribed). (All available online — arks in the footnotes; masters in sources/media/earsham-manorial-court-fts/_local/.)
  3. Any connection to the West Barsham line or the East Dereham Gurneys — none visible in the will. (Unknown online.)

  1. Will of John Gurney of Earsham, Norfolk, yeoman, 10 Aug. 1638, registered copy at p. 168 of the Norwich-circuit will register digitised as “Cambridgeshire. Wills 1638–1639 | Suffolk. Wills 1638–1639 | Norfolk. Wills 1638–1639” (FamilySearch film 008076858), images 454–455: ark:/61903/3:1:3Q9M-CSN6-3WWW and ark:/61903/3:1:3Q9M-CSN6-3W7R. Read 2026-06-10 from the full-resolution page images; the “Earsham” parish reading is ~85–90% (corroborated by executor John Youngman “of St Andrews”). Source ID: familysearch-fulltext-search. ↩︎

  2. Expert paleography re-read of the 1638 will body (paleography packet 17, 2026-06-14/15; images 3WWW and 3W7R): the contingent-devisee brother’s forename reads Syon (high confidence — the long looped initial S, then yon), not Lyon; co-executors read as Syon Gurney and brother-in-law John Youngman; wife Mary and son John (minor) confirmed. The reader flagged a provisional recognition lesson — in this NCC registered-will hand Syon/Sion is misreadable as Lyon — held pending a second confirming instance. Source ID: familysearch-fulltext-search. ↩︎ ↩︎

  3. Probate clause and witness list at the top of image 456 of film 008076858, ark:/61903/3:1:3Q9M-CSN6-3W3D; full-resolution image read 2026-06-11 (“Probatum fuit … apud Norwicum … xxvj die Decembris Anno Domini 1639”); working transcription appended to the corpus-supplement file. Source ID: familysearch-fulltext-search. ↩︎

  4. Nuncupative-will memorandum of Sarah Gurney of Bungay, Suffolk, “Norwich. Wills 1709–1711” (NCC registered copy wills vol. 147, FamilySearch DGS 008076925), image 450, fo. 420, margin “Sara Gurney | 97,” ark:/61903/3:1:3Q9M-CSND-1SKS-C; full-resolution image read 2026-06-11; working transcription in the corpus supplement linked in the body. Source ID: familysearch-fulltext-search. ↩︎

  5. Will of James Adams of Bungay, Suffolk, merchant, 31 Jan. 1692/3, NCC registered copy wills vols. 142–143 (1691–1698, FamilySearch DGS 008472233), beginning image 201 (ark:/61903/3:1:3Q9M-C39Z-BJQV) and continuing on image 202 (ark:/61903/3:1:3Q9M-C39Z-BJML); expert paleographic reading 2026-06-11, sources/corpus_supplement/paleo-2026-06-packet-11-mary-scamler-and-james-adams-waveney-wills.md (which also establishes the page boundary against the adjacent Mary Scamler/Scambler will, images 199–201, and notes Adams’s probate clause lies beyond the staged images — one remaining pull). Source ID: familysearch-fulltext-search. ↩︎

  6. “Earsham, Norfolk, England. Court Records 1710–1818” (FamilySearch DGS 004389278, item 17 of 18 on the film), Gurn* Gourn* film-scoped sweep of 48 cards 2026-06-11 (Earsham subset ~20 cards; the Docking and Diss cards on the same film are the banking Gurneys). Key arks: 1719 Lyon entries ark:/61903/3:1:S3HY-6XP3-H4R; 1720–24 Latin entries ark:/61903/3:1:S3HY-6XP3-ZS6 and ark:/61903/3:1:S3HY-6XPS-TY6; “Tenement Gurneys … Hallsty” recitals ark:/61903/3:1:S3HY-6XPS-TZT; “late of Susan Gurney” 1748 ark:/61903/3:1:S3HY-6XPS-YVW; abuttal recitals to 1811 ark:/61903/3:1:S3HY-6XP3-C89. Source ID: familysearch-fulltext-search. ↩︎

  7. FamilySearch, “England, Births and Christenings, 1538–1975”: Sion Gurney christened 10 June 1677 at Earsham, Norfolk, parents Sion Gurney and Sarah — identifying Sarah Gurney’s husband as Sion (Syon) Gurney of Earsham. The same Earsham Sion Gurney also appears with wife Ann (daughter Elizabeth christened 2 January 1663) and with an Esther, so the Earsham Sion household(s) and the wife sequence need the parish register to disentangle. The 1677 son Sion is the Lyon/Syon Gurney later of St Peter Parmentergate, Norwich (the Norwich Sion-Gurney family, baptisms 1706–1743). Index level. Source ID: fs-england-births-christenings. ↩︎

  8. Syon Gurnie, christened 1593, Hempnall, Norfolk, father John — FindMyPast “Norfolk Baptisms”; the same Hempnall John-Gurney household has children Anna (1640) and Elizabeth (1641, mother Jane). Index level. Source ID: findmypast-norfolk-baptisms-index. ↩︎

  9. FindMyPast “Norfolk Baptisms,” surname Gurnie, year-of-birth 1610 ±40 (2026-06-20): Hempnall (“Hempnall and the Hempnall Group of Parishes”) children of John Gurnie — Henricus (1576, mother Margr[aret]), Elisa[beth] (1585), Johs/John (1587), Susana (1590), Syon (1593), Margaret (1596); plus a Robert Gurnie household (Jana 1570, mother Anna; Jacobus/James 1578) and Marie Gurnie (1598) at Redenhall, father John. Index level. Note also (capture mechanics): the FMP baptisms results URL does not bind a fathersfirstname or mothersfirstname filter — isolate a household by the exact index spelling of the surname. Source ID: findmypast-norfolk-baptisms-index. ↩︎

  10. FindMyPast “Norfolk Baptisms,” Earsham: John Gurney s. John (1635), John Gurney s. John (1636), Henry Gurney s. John (1638), and Susan Gurney dau. Sion (1638). Index level. Source ID: findmypast-norfolk-baptisms-index. ↩︎