These research notes are provided as-is and contain supplementary working research.
Analysis
Anderson's "Boston" settlement attribution reads as a conflation with the 1636 Newgate apprentice
Anderson's Great Migration Directory gives John Gurney's New England settlements as Boston and Braintree, but no Boston record names him. The attribution is most plausibly the same conflation that produced the American family tradition of an 1615 birth at Southwark: the 1636 runaway apprentice John Gurney - a distinct, younger man - was bound to John Newgate the feltmaker and lived in Newgate's Boston household, a servant's position that would generate neither a church admission nor a property record. A short unrecorded stay at Boston by the elder John before he appears at Weymouth in June 1641 remains possible; Boston lay under a day away and traded with Weymouth constantly. But transient lodging is invisible in principle, so the scenario can be neither tested nor used.
Why this conclusion
- Analyzes Evidence Anderson GMD p.158 - published coverage summary; origin 'Unknown'Reads Anderson's directory entry for what its "Boston" settlement attribution rests on.
- Depends on Analysis The 1636 Newgate 'John Gurney' apprentice is not the Braintree emigrantThe conflation reading depends on the 1636 Newgate apprentice being a distinct, younger man.
Related context
- Provides context for Analysis The 1615/Southwark tradition belongs to Newgate's apprentice, not the emigrantThe same conflation explains the American 1615-birth tradition and Anderson's Boston attribution.
- Context from Finding Boston silence: every surviving Boston-era record class holds no John GurneyCross-unit: the record-level Boston negative supplies the ground on which the identity work reads Anderson's 'Boston' as a Newgate-apprentice conflation.
Sources
- Anderson, Robert Charles. The Great Migration Directory: Immigrants to New England, 1620–1640: A Concise Compendium. 2nd ed. Boston: NEHGS, 2025., p. 158, John Gurney entry: settlement "Boston, Braintree"; origin "Unknown."
Topic file location: Identity — assessment
Technical details
- Research item:
G13-RI-000176 - Graph revision:
244 - Machine-readable JSON:
/assets/g13-graph/findings/G13-RI-000176.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.