Gurney Genealogy Library Updated 15 July 2026 by Allen Gurney

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

Colonial arrival chronology

John Gurney was living at Weymouth, Massachusetts, by 30 May / 2 June 1641. He arrived in New England between 1636 and early 1641, most likely in 1638–40. He was absent from the 1636 Weymouth property grants, received ordinary town land there later, and had moved to Braintree by 1645.

The 1641 gunpowder record

The earliest record that firmly places John Gurney in New England is the Massachusetts General Court order of 2 June 1641 remitting the fine of John Porter, James Ludden, and John Gurney, incurred “for want of gunpowder.”[1] The underlying petition survives one step closer to the event: calendared in the Massachusetts State Archives colonial collection, it is dated 30 May 1641 and reads “Petition of John Gurny, Richard Porter, and James Ludden of Weymouth … remission of the fines laid upon them for [want of gunpowder].”[2] A nineteenth-century secondary source independently fixes the same fact: Joseph W. Porter’s Genealogy of the Descendants of Richard Porter (1878) quotes the court order and glosses it “Ludden and Gurney were of Weymouth.”[3]

Read together, the three attestations establish presence, place, and a civic/military-regulatory context — but nothing more. The record does not by itself establish John’s age, family, landholding, or office. Evidence

Porter forename: the associate reading

The printed court order names “John Porter”; the earlier petition names “Richard Porter … of Weymouth.” A full-resolution read of the petition calendar (image 947), obtained through FamilySearch full-text search, confirms the forename plainly reads Richard, not a transcription artefact.[2][4] The weight therefore shifts to Richard Porter — the documented Rev. Hull–company Weymouth settler — with the printed order’s “John” the likelier slip. This is analysis, not a new identity claim: it does not change who John Gurney was, but it makes his cleanest 1641 associate a Weymouth/Hull-company comparator rather than a Hingham/Salem Porter, which coheres with the early-Weymouth-settler reading below. The petition document itself (beyond the careful fair-copy calendar) remains the outstanding image to pull. Evidence

Original Weymouth grantee before 1643

John’s Weymouth landholding sharpens the arrival window. Gilbert Nash’s Historical Sketch of the Town of Weymouth (1885), Appendix C, preserves what its text calls the 1643 partial record of Weymouth property owners. Within it, a two-acre East Field parcel (p. 258) and a four-acre Mill Field parcel (p. 278) are recorded as “first granted to John Gurny/Gurnie” but already held by other men by 1643.[5] John was therefore an original grantee whose first parcels had already passed to others by the 1643 list — an early-settler profile, with his original grants made as a new Weymouth inhabitant by about 1642. A separate, later grant (great lot no. 16, Second Division, p. 282) is dated 2 February 1651-52 and was likewise subsequently granted to others.

This resolves a looseness in the secondary literature. The 1923 History of Weymouth dates his Weymouth lands only “as early as 3 Feb. 1651-52” and even doubts “whether he ever resided in Weymouth.”[6] That framing reads only the Second-Division grant and misses Nash’s earlier 1643 record; the firm anchor is the pre-1643 partial record, not the 1651-52 great lot. Evidence

Arrival window and the move to Braintree

John was not among the men receiving Weymouth property grants in 1636. Earlier Massachusetts arrivals are more likely to leave records, and Weymouth’s early population was small. The well-preserved Boston records also contain no John Gurney of his generation. Taken together, those facts make an arrival before 1636 extremely unlikely. They support 1636 as the beginning of the plausible range and 1638–40 as the best estimate.[7][8]

The firm upper bound is Weymouth presence by 30 May / 2 June 1641. John held real Weymouth land in his first years yet had moved to Braintree by 1645; because his Weymouth parcels were already divested by the 1643 record, the move itself falls c. 1642–1645.

Robert Charles Anderson’s Great Migration Directory (2025) records John with an arrival of 1636 and New England residences at Boston and Braintree — Weymouth is not listed — while leaving his English origin “Unknown.”[9] The 1636 date falls within this range. The Boston attribution is best explained as a conflation with the separate Newgate apprentice, an analysis Anderson did not have the later facts to make. Anderson’s directory is a useful published summary, but it is not primary evidence and does not outweigh the Weymouth and Boston record work. Evidence

  1. Nathaniel B. Shurtleff, ed., Records of the Governor and Company of the Massachusetts Bay in New England, vol. 1 (Boston: William White, 1853), p. 331. Internet Archive recordsofgoverno01mass. Source ID: massachusetts-bay-records-v1-1853. ↩︎

  2. Massachusetts State Archives collection, colonial period 1622–1788, calendar of petitions, entry dated 30 May 1641 (FamilySearch film 007702977, image 947, ark 3:1:3Q9M-C9Y5-F9M1-4). Full-resolution image read 2026-06-27 confirms the forename reads “Richard.” Source ID: massachusetts-state-archives-colonial. ↩︎ ↩︎

  3. Joseph W. Porter, A Genealogy of the Descendants of Richard Porter, Who Settled at Weymouth, Mass., 1635 (Bangor, 1878), p. 225. Extract at sources/corpus_supplement/porter-genealogy-richard-porter-1878-gurney-extract.md. Source ID: porter-genealogy-richard-porter-1878. ↩︎

  4. The full-resolution image of the petition calendar (Massachusetts State Archives colonial collection, film 007702977, image 947) was located and read through FamilySearch full-text search; the read (2026-06-27) confirms the forename is “Richard.” This is a second representation — the full-text-search image read — of the same 30 May 1641 petition recorded in the archives calendar entry cited above, retained per the source-losslessness contract for its distinct (image-level) reading. Source ID: familysearch-fulltext-search. ↩︎

  5. Gilbert Nash, Historical Sketch of the Town of Weymouth (1885), Appendix C (“Property Owners and Description of Property in 1643 …”), pp. 258, 278, 282; Internet Archive historicalsketch00nash_0. Extract at sources/corpus_supplement/nash-historical-sketch-weymouth-1885-gurney-extracts.md. Source ID: nash-historical-sketch-weymouth-1885. ↩︎

  6. History of Weymouth, Massachusetts, 4 vols. (Weymouth Historical Society, 1923), vol. 3, p. 251, John Gurney Sr. entry. Source ID: history-of-weymouth. ↩︎

  7. Gilbert Nash, Historical Sketch of the Town of Weymouth (1885), Appendix C, p. 280, the 1636 Fresh Pond property-grant roll of sixteen named householders; John Gurney is not named. Source ID: nash-historical-sketch-weymouth-1885. ↩︎

  8. The Boston record-class sweep is documented in Colonial record coverage: First Church records, town and property records, the Aspinwall notarial register, Lechford’s Note-Book, Suffolk Deeds, and vital records contain no John Gurney of his generation. Primary witnesses and limits are cited there; this is a cross-reference, not a separate source claim. ↩︎

  9. Robert Charles Anderson, The Great Migration Directory: Immigrants to New England, 1620–1640, 2nd ed. (Boston: New England Historic Genealogical Society, 2025), p. 158: origin “Unknown,” arrival 1636, residences Boston and Braintree (Weymouth not listed). Extract at sources/corpus/The Great Migration Directory 2025 Page 158.txt. Source ID: anderson-gmd-2015. ↩︎