Gurney Genealogy Library Updated 15 July 2026 by Allen Gurney

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

Family — the children as a family group

John Gurney’s children are known as a family group of five — Sarah, Mary, Richard, John, and Peter — with Isaac a probable but unproven sixth, and all of them, by every indication, born to his first wife Mary. No single colonial record ever lists the family together: the roster is reconstructed from the compiled Braintree and Gurney genealogies, cross-checked against Torrey’s marriage compendium, and anchored child by child in scattered land, court, and probate records.

The children as a family group

The core roster comes down through the compilers. Waldo Chamberlain Sprague’s Genealogies of the Families of Braintree lists John Gurney’s children as Sarah, Mary, Richard, John, and Peter; the Weymouth town history carries the same set in its John Gurney family entry, and Jean Gurney Rigler’s Gurney genealogy repeats it.[1][2][3] All were Mary’s — she is, by every indication, the mother of the whole family — with the older children born in England and the youngest perhaps in Massachusetts, so that the childbearing years run from the couple’s mid-1620s English marriage to about 1643.[4]

Individually we identify the children from different research sources. Sarah is listed first and was likely the eldest, but she is otherwise undocumented — no birth, marriage, or death record has been found — and survives only in the compiled roster.[1] Mary is documented via her marriage to Daniel Shed at Braintree in 1647.[4] Richard is the direct-line ancestor (G12), of Weymouth, whose own record trail includes multiple primary records detailed in Richard Gurney’s fact sheet and research notes rather than here. John Jr. and Peter both carried the family into King Philip’s War a decade after their father’s death — John Jr. among the dead at Mendon in July 1675, and Peter a soldier in Captain Isaac Johnson’s company, mustered at Dedham in December 1675 for the Narragansett campaign and killed later in the war — the post-1662 descendant stream developed in the family-descendants research rather than in this unit.[5]

Torrey’s compendium supplies an independent cross-check of the whole group. His New England Marriages Prior to 1700 gives a one-page reading of the John Gurney family and preserves John Jr.'s Mendon household, a wife Ruth and children John, Samuel, and Mary, a level of detail the Braintree genealogies do not carry.[6] Evidence

The uncertain sixth: Isaac

Isaac is the one child the core lists do not carry — a later and uncertain addition rather than a name in Sprague or Rigler. A young Isacke Gurney surfaces instead in a tight cluster of colonial court records: whipped for pilfering and disorderly living at Scituate by the Plymouth court on 1 March 1663/4 and returned constable-to-constable to the town, then three years later jailed for vagrancy and burglary around Medford and committed to the Boston prison under a warrant signed by Daniel Gookin (Suffolk County court file no. 792, June 1667).[7]

No record states his parentage, but by elimination he is most plausibly John Gurney-1’s son. An Isaac born about 1643 needs a father of John’s own generation, and the only other Gurney male then in the Braintree–Weymouth–Boston orbit, Richard (G12, born about 1630–34), was himself a child in 1643 and far too young to have fathered him; no other Gurney household is documented in the region. The uncommon forename, the age fit, and the Braintree-orbit locations all point to the emigrant’s family — a moderate identification, not a proven one. The dedicated Isaac Gurney subject file preserves him cautiously as a distinct person, pending a record that names his father.[7] Evidence

  1. Waldo Chamberlain Sprague, Genealogies of the Families of Braintree, Mass., 1640–1850 (Boston: New England Historic Genealogical Society, 2001), p. 695, John Gurney entry: lists the children Sarah, Mary, Richard, John, and Peter, Sarah first and otherwise undocumented. Source ID: sprague-braintree. ↩︎ ↩︎

  2. History of Weymouth, Massachusetts (Weymouth: Weymouth Historical Society, 1923), vol. 3, p. 251, John Gurney family entry, carrying the same child roster on the Weymouth side. Source ID: history-of-weymouth. ↩︎

  3. Jean Gurney Rigler, The Gurney Family from Aaron to Zuinglius: A Genealogical Dictionary, rev. ed. (Honolulu: J. G. Rigler, 1994), John Gurney-1 children entry, repeating the compiled roster. Source ID: rigler-gurney-family-aaron-zuinglius-1994. ↩︎

  4. Frank E. Shedd, Hubert C. Shedd, and J. Gardner Bartlett, Daniel Shed Genealogy: Ancestry and Descendants of Daniel Shed of Braintree, Massachusetts, 1327–1920 (Boston: Shedd Family Association, 1920): Daniel Shed (baptized Finchingfield, Essex, 25 June 1620) married Mary Gurney at Braintree in 1647, bounding the daughter’s birth to by about 1628 and John and Mary’s English marriage to the mid-1620s. Cited here only to place daughter Mary in the family group and to set the childbearing window; the marriage and its English-origin bearing are carried on first-wife finding G13-RI-000063 in the marriages unit. Source ID: shedd-daniel-shed-genealogy-1920. ↩︎ ↩︎

  5. George Madison Bodge, Soldiers in King Philip’s War (Boston: Printed for the Author, 1891), p. 114 (Captain Isaac Johnson’s company, Weymouth file, “Peeter Gurnay”; Dedham muster 10 December 1675), Peter absent from the same company’s December 1675 casualty list, consistent with his death later in the war. Cited here only to place Peter and John Jr. in the family group; their war service and the post-1662 descendant stream are the subject of the Mendon-descendants research. Source ID: bodge-soldiers-king-philips-war-1891. ↩︎

  6. Clarence Almon Torrey, New England Marriages Prior to 1700 (Baltimore: Genealogical Publishing Co., 2004), p. 331, Gurney block: the John1 lines (“John (-1663) & 1/wf ? (-1661), b 1628, Weymouth”; “John (1603-1663) & 2/wf Grezell … 12 Nov 1661, Braintree”; and “John (-1675?) & Ruth … Menden (had John, Samuel, Mary)”) cross-check the family group, John1’s dates, and John Jr.'s Mendon household. Transcribed extract at sources/corpus_supplement/torrey-new-england-marriages-prior-1700-page-331-gurney.md. Source ID: torrey-new-england-marriages-prior-1700. ↩︎

  7. Isaac Gurney court-record cluster, read via FamilySearch full-text search. Plymouth Colony court, session of 1 March 1663/4: “Isacke Gurney, for pilfering and other disorderly liueing, was sentenced by the Court to bee whipt,” with the order to the Townsmen of Scituate and his return constable-to-constable (“Plymouth. Court Orders 1661–1668,” printed-edition images 35 and 37, arks 3:1:3Q9M-C9BJ-NW1P-1, 3:1:3Q9M-C9BJ-NW15-5). Suffolk County, Massachusetts, Court Case Files 1666–1668, file no. 792, “Case of Isack Gurney, 25 June 1667” (3 papers): committal to the Boston prison and examination before Daniel Gookin, 28 June 1667 (images 56–59, arks 3:1:3Q9M-CSVR-R913-N, 3:1:3Q9M-CSVR-R91S-Y). Full treatment and the verbatim file papers on research/people/isaac-gurney-scituate-boston.md. Source ID: familysearch-fulltext-search. ↩︎ ↩︎