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

Evidence

Thomas Chaplin's 1672 Bury will: 40 pounds to 'Mary Gurney my servant' beside a New England (Houchin) debt

Thomas Chaplin of Bury St Edmunds, gent., 'being aged,' in his will dated 24 April 1672 (proved 25 November 1672, Archdeaconry of Sudbury) left 40 pounds 'to Mary Gurney my servant' - an extraordinary legacy for a servant, eight times the 5 pounds he left his own daughter Abigail Whiteing - and in the same will directed that a debt owing from 'Jeremy Houchin, late in New England' be collected and 60 pounds of it divided among his Shepherd grandchildren. The will places a Bury St Edmunds Gurney woman in service in 1672, in a household directly tied to Boston through the Houchin debt - a concrete instance of the Bury/New England traffic Banks's attribution gestured at. It names no John Gurney and connects to no identified natal household; its bearing is on the Suffolk-migration milieu, not on the emigrant's parentage.

Confidence: Moderate

Date: 1672 (Thomas Chaplin's Bury St Edmunds will)

Related context

Sources

Topic file location: Origin — Bury connections

Relationship map

Technical details
  • Research item: G13-RI-000188
  • Graph revision: 244
  • Machine-readable JSON: /assets/g13-graph/findings/G13-RI-000188.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.