These research notes are provided as-is and contain supplementary working research.
Evidence
1663 probate inventory: itemized movable estate (£55 14s 6d)
The manuscript inventory of John Gurney Senr's goods and estate, Braintree, 16 March 1663 (taken by Gregory Belcher, Edmund Quincy, and Thomas Faxon), itemizes his movable estate line by line — apparel, boots and hat; bedding, blanket, pillows and cases; pewter, pincers, brass skillet and kettle; a cupboard and a musket; plough-irons, coulter, axes, mattock and chisel; a chair and frame goods, barrels and trays; wheat and Indian corn with grain-boxes, hoops and tubs; a horse and yoke of oxen; sows, pigs and young cattle; an old barrow, wheels and axletree; and one unvalued land line 'an estate layd out in land at Quinapaug wch we know not' — appraised in all at £55 14s 6d.
Date: 16 March 1663
Why this conclusion
- Supports Negative result Negative: no tailoring tools or cloth in the estateThe full inventory line-scan showing no tailoring tool or cloth is the evidentiary basis for the occupational negative.
- Supports Finding Finding: estate wealth concentrated in livestock and the working farmThe itemized appraisal values (horse, oxen, swine, young cattle, plough-gear, grain) are the direct arithmetic basis for the livestock/husbandry-dominant profile.
- Supports Finding Finding: a sparse but sufficient householdThe itemized household goods (apparel, bedding, small pewter/brass, one cupboard, chair/frame, barrels, trays, musket) are the direct basis for the sparse-household reading.
- Supports Analysis Analysis: an all-movable estate with no valued real estateThe inventory carries only movable goods plus one unvalued land line, directly grounding the all-personalty reading of the £55 14s 6d total.
Related context
- Context from Finding Candidate D eliminated: 1662 London residence incompatible with the colonial John's 1662/3 deathCross-unit: the colonial John's 1663 estate inventory is the primary record fixing his own death timing against which the 1662 London hearth-tax entry is read as incompatible.
Sources
- Massachusetts, Suffolk County, probate and family court records, 1636-1915. Digital images from Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court Archives & Records Preservation, Boston, via FamilySearch., DGS 102840311, Case #338 image 516
- New England Historic Genealogical Society. "Suffolk Wills." The New England Historical and Genealogical Register, vol. 12 (Boston: New England Historic Genealogical Society, 1858), p. 53., NEHGR vol. 12 (1858), p. 53 (estate abstract: appraisers, £55 14s 6d total; line-item goods and the Quinapaug line not carried in the abstract)
- Suffolk County, Massachusetts, Probate Records, Case #338, John Gurney Senr probate inventory, Braintree, 16 March 1663; manuscript image supplied by Allen Gurney, file 102840311_00516.jpg., Suffolk County Probate Records, Case #338, inventory 16 March 1663 (manuscript image 102840311_00516.jpg)
- George, Elijah, register. Index to the Probate Records of the County of Suffolk, Massachusetts, from the Year 1636 to and including the Year 1893. Vol. 2, G to O. Boston: Rockwell and Churchill, City Printers, 1895., vol. 2 (G-O), Gurney case no. 338
Topic file location: Colonial material life
Technical details
- Research item:
G13-RI-000033 - Graph revision:
244 - Machine-readable JSON:
/assets/g13-graph/findings/G13-RI-000033.json
This is one research item from the John Gurney research graph; the fuller narrative treatment is in the linked topic above and the research library.