Gurney Genealogy Library Updated 15 July 2026 by Allen Gurney

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

Family — wives and marriages

John Gurney married twice. His first wife was Mary — so named in the compiled Braintree genealogy, though the primary record leaves her unnamed — whom he married in England by the mid-1620s and who, by every indication, was the mother of his children; she died at Braintree on 20 September 1661. Three weeks later, on 12 November 1661, he married a much-married Braintree widow, Grizzell, as her fourth husband. Both marriages come down to us largely through a single Braintree town record whose surname was for a century misread as Cheny — the reading question this topic settles first.

The first wife, Mary

The record is thin on her even by name: her forename Mary comes from the compiled Braintree genealogy, not from any primary document — the Braintree town record enters only “the wife of John,” and Torrey’s marriage compendium likewise records her as an unnamed first wife who died in 1661.[1][2][3] Her maiden name is unknown; the “Mary Richards” of some later derivative trees has never been traced to a primary record and is not adopted here.[1] We know she died at Braintree on 20 September 1661 with a manuscript entry of the “wife of John” death.[2] Her marriage can nonetheless be dated within England: their daughter Mary Gurney married Daniel Shed (baptized 25 June 1620 at Finchingfield, Essex) at Braintree in 1647, which puts the daughter’s birth by about 1628 and the parents’ marriage in England shortly before that.[4] Evidence

The unrecovered English marriage

No English record of John and Mary’s marriage has been found, despite extended searching of the indexed parish collections across FamilySearch, Findmypast, Free UK Genealogy, and Ancestry — the fuller family and parish-register search sits in the case file’s parish-record section. The search has included queries that deliberately allow for misspelled and mis-indexed names: a Findmypast marriage sweep for any G*rn*-surname groom marrying a Mary (spelling variants included), 1620–1634, run both with and without the forename John, still returns no East Anglian John Gurney × Mary event — the only East Anglian Gurney-surname hit being an unrelated Robert Gvrney × Mary at Norwich in 1622.[5] The absence is best read as a coverage gap in the surviving and indexed parish registers for the couple’s home parish, not as evidence against an English marriage.[5] Evidence

The second marriage: Grissell of the many marriages

John’s second wife has a small genealogical fame of her own as “Grissell of the many marriages.” She married John Gurney at Braintree on 12 November 1661, by Peter Brackett, as the fourth of five husbands in a sequence that runs Thomas Jewell, Humphrey Griggs, Henry Kibby, John Gurney, and — after John’s death — John Burge, whom she married in 1667.[2][6][3] Three independent witnesses carry the marriage: the Braintree town record itself (the 12 November 1661 marriage line, under the misread Cheny surname resolved above), Mary Lovering Holman’s study of Grizzell’s marriage chain — which names “John Gurney Sr.” outright — and Torrey’s marriage compendium, which carries the same date and husband sequence. The town-record reading resolved above therefore corroborates a marriage already well attested by the compilers rather than establishing it.[2][6][3] Compiled Gurney genealogies give Grizzell the maiden name Fletcher and make her a daughter of Robert Fletcher of Chelmsford, Essex; that parentage is a purely colonial attribution and carries no bearing on John Gurney’s own English origin — there is no evidence tying John to Chelmsford.[6] Evidence

“John Cheny” is John Gurney: reading the 1661 Braintree record

The one place John’s second marriage and his first wife’s death survive in a town record is the Braintree book of births, marriages, and deaths — and in the accessible 1886 printed transcription both lines read Cheny, not Gurney. The printed volume gives the marriage as “John Cheny Senior and Grizell Kidbee,” 9th month 12, 1661, and the earlier death as “Cheny the wife of John Cheny,” 7th month 20, 1661.[2] Those two dates are exactly the Gurney chronology — Mary Gurney’s death immediately followed by the Grizzell remarriage — but the surname is Cheny, and for a century that mismatch left the Braintree record unusable as Gurney evidence.

The manuscript resolves it. Read at image level, the Braintree records are two layers: a 17th-century original book and a later fair-copy register. On the fair-copy marriages page the ink main text reads “John Girny, Senior (and) Grizell ——X——, by Peter Brackett, 9mo 12, 1661” — the groom is Girny, an attested Tudor-and-Stuart parish spelling of Gurney, carrying the copyist’s own underline convention for an uncertain reading; the bride’s surname is left blank with a long dash, illegible in the source the copyist worked from. The word “Cheny / Kidbee” appears only in the left margin, in a later pencil hand — the same annotate-the-blanks pattern that recurs down both pages.[7] The 1886 print therefore followed the pencil annotation, not the fair copy’s ink; and the pencil annotator, tellingly, got the bride right (Grizzell was the widow of Henry Kibby, so “Kidbee” is her late husband’s name) while misreading the groom’s Girny as Cheny. The 17th-century original death page is fainter still — “[?]eny the wiffe of John [?]eny dyed the 7th month 20, 1661” — with the surname’s initial letterform genuinely ambiguous between a secretary-hand Ch and G, the one point the manuscript does not yet settle by eye.[7]

An independent authority reached the same conclusion from the records alone. The compiler Charles Henry Pope, working through the colony, town, and church records for his 1900 Pioneers of Massachusetts, entered John Gurney of Braintree with the flat note that “he is called John Cheny, Sen., in the printed records of Braintree, by a typographical error,” and read both the 20 (7) 1661 wife-death line and the 12 (9) 1661 Grizzell marriage line as the Gurney family.[8]

Taken together the evidence resolves the “John Cheny” of the 1661 Braintree marriage and death lines to John Gurney. The fair copy’s ink reads Girny; the “Cheny” is a later pencil gloss the 1886 print mistook for text; Pope independently ruled the printed Cheny a typographical error; and every surrounding fact fits Gurney and not Cheney. No John Cheney family is otherwise attested at Braintree in 1661 — the known colonial John Cheney was of Roxbury and Newbury — whereas the officiant, Peter Brackett, was a documented member of John Gurney’s Braintree circle, and Mary Gurney’s death three weeks earlier and John Gurney’s 1663 Braintree probate bracket the marriage precisely.[9] The reading is strong — roughly the 85–90% range — with the one residual being the deaths-page letterform, which a paleographic comparison of the scribe’s uncontested Ch- and G- words on the same opening would close. 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: names his first wife Mary and treats her maiden name as unknown. This compiled genealogy is the source of the forename, which the primary Braintree death record does not give; the “Mary Richards” surname of later derivative trees is untraced to any primary record. Source ID: sprague-braintree. ↩︎ ↩︎

  2. Braintree (Mass.), Records of the Town of Braintree, 1640 to 1793, ed. Samuel A. Bates (Randolph, Mass.: D. H. Huxford, printer, 1886), p. 717 (marriage, “John Cheny Senior and Grizell Kidbee,” 9th month 12, 1661 = 12 November 1661 New Style) and p. 638 (death, “Cheny the wife of John Cheny,” 7th month 20, 1661 = 20 September 1661). The death line names no forename for the wife; “Mary” is supplied by the compiled genealogy, not this record. Source ID: braintree-records-1640-1793-1886. ↩︎ ↩︎ ↩︎ ↩︎ ↩︎

  3. Clarence Almon Torrey, New England Marriages Prior to 1700 (Baltimore: Genealogical Publishing Co., 2004), p. 331: the first-wife entry reads “GURNEY, John (-1663) & 1/wf ? (-1661); b 1628; Weymouth” — corroborating a first wife who died 1661 and a marriage before 1628, but leaving her unnamed. The adjacent second-wife entry gives “2/wf Grezell (Fletcher)(Jewell)(Griggs) Kibbee … m/5 John Burge 1667; 12 Nov 1661 Braintree.” Source ID: torrey-new-england-marriages-prior-1700. ↩︎ ↩︎ ↩︎

  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 25 June 1620 at Finchingfield, Essex, married Mary Gurney at Braintree in 1647 — bounding the daughter’s birth to by c. 1628 and John and Mary’s English marriage to the mid-1620s. Source ID: shedd-daniel-shed-genealogy-1920. ↩︎

  5. England Marriages 1538–1973 (Findmypast), wildcard searches executed 9 June 2026: surname G*rn*, bride first name Mary with variants, marriage years 1620–1634, with and without groom first name John. No East Anglian John Gurney × Mary event; any-forename G*rn* + Mary(variants) 1620–1634 returns 33 results, the only East Anglian Gurney-surname hit being Robert Gvrney × Mary, Norwich, 1622. This wildcard sweep is the most variant-tolerant instance of a broader parish-collection search (FamilySearch, Findmypast, Ancestry); the fuller family and parish-register search is in the case file. Source ID: findmypast-england-marriages-gurney-mary-wildcard-sweep-2026-06. ↩︎ ↩︎

  6. Mary Lovering Holman, “Grissell of the Many Marriages,” The American Genealogist, vol. 10, no. 2 (October 1933), pp. 70–73: the 12 November 1661 Braintree marriage by Peter Brackett to “John Gurney Sr.,” and Grizzell’s husband sequence Jewell – Griggs – Kibbee – Gurney – Burge, with the compiled Fletcher (of Chelmsford, Essex) parentage. Source ID: tag-10-70. ↩︎ ↩︎ ↩︎

  7. Braintree town-record manuscript, FamilySearch DGS 007009769 (FS film 940974 series): fair-copy marriages register p. 174, ark 3:1:3QS7-8979-44FR (ink “John Girny, Senior (and) Grizell ——X——, by Peter Brackett, 9mo 12, 1661,” with pencil “Cheny / Kidbee” in the left margin); 17th-century original deaths page, ark 3:1:3QS7-8979-4WF2 (“[?]eny the wiffe of John [?]eny dyed the 7th month 20, 1661,” ambiguous initial letterform); Grizzell’s Jewell first-family births page, ark 3:1:3QS7-8979-478N. Full-resolution images read 2026-07-01; crops held at sources/intake/dump-files/dump-2026-07-01-images/. “Girny/Girney” is an attested Gurney parish variant. Source ID: familysearch-fulltext-search. ↩︎ ↩︎

  8. Charles Henry Pope, The Pioneers of Massachusetts (Boston: Charles H. Pope, 1900), main entry under “GURNET, GORNET” (print p. ~204): “John, Sen., tailor, Braintree. [N. B. He is called John Cheny, Sen., in the printed records of Braintree, by a typographical error.] … His wife d. 20 (7) 1661, and he m. 12 (9) 1661, Grizzell, widow of Henry Kibbee. He d. in 1662-3; inv. March 16, 1663.” Source ID: pope-pioneers-of-massachusetts-1900. ↩︎

  9. Peter Brackett — the officiant of the 1661 marriage — was a documented member of John Gurney’s Braintree circle: he held John’s Billerica proprietary right in 1659, witnessed John’s 1661/2 Monatiquot-freehold conveyance to Richard Thayer, and was a creditor of John’s 1663 estate. The Brackett association is treated with its sources in the Braintree community and frontier rights units; the 1663 Gurney probate is material life. ↩︎