Gurney Genealogy Library Updated 15 July 2026 by Allen Gurney

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

Identity — Candidate A: Aylesbury, Buckinghamshire

Candidate A is a John Gurney who lived continuously in Buckinghamshire and Northamptonshire from 1628 to 1653 — squarely across the years the Massachusetts emigrant was at Weymouth and Braintree — and is eliminated on exactly that ground. A baptism at Stewkley in 1603 gives him a father also named John Gurney; he married Alice Oliffe at Bierton with Broughton in 1628; and he had five children baptized at Saint Mary, Aylesbury, between 1638 and 1653.[1][2] A government record ties the Aylesbury years to a later move: a 1641 certificate of residence recording his shift from the Aylesbury half-hundred into Northamptonshire.[3] A further entry naming him tenant at Walgrave, Northamptonshire in 1650 is carried in the project’s earlier research without a located archival reference, and is flagged here as an open sourcing gap rather than relied on.[4]

The Aylesbury family chain

FamilySearch’s England, Births and Christenings index carries the whole run directly. Jhon Gurney, son of Jhon Gurney, was christened 21 February 1603 at Stewkley. A John Gurney was baptized at Saint Mary, Aylesbury, on 16 December 1638 — most plausibly Candidate A’s eldest indexed child, about ten years after the Bierton marriage. Sarah followed on 22 August 1639, Daniell on 26 December 1645, Jonathan on 22 November 1647, and Hannah on 12 November 1653.[1] The Findmypast Buckinghamshire Marriage Index separately carries the marriage itself: John Gurney and Alice Oliffe, 24 April 1628, Bierton with Broughton, Bucks Archives PR16/1/1Q p. 30 — correcting an older “Alice Collindridge” identification that has no documentary support.[2] Stewkley, Bierton, and Aylesbury sit within five miles of each other inside the Aylesbury hundred, so ordinary local mobility — not a change of household — explains the run of parishes; the 1641 certificate of residence is itself the government’s own record of the one long-distance move in the chain, into Northamptonshire.[3]

The elimination does not rest on that certificate. The Saint Mary, Aylesbury baptisms alone put a John Gurney fathering children in Buckinghamshire in 1638, 1639, 1645, 1647, and 1653 — the whole span across which the Massachusetts John Gurney is documented at Weymouth and Braintree.[1]

A second, separate Aylesbury marriage complicates only the wife, not the elimination: FamilySearch Records also carries a John Gurney marrying Anne Cowheard at Saint Mary, Aylesbury, on 25 October 1638. Either this is a different Aylesbury John, or Candidate A remarried after Alice Oliffe’s death and the 1639–1653 children belong to the second marriage; FamilySearch does not index a mother’s name on the children’s baptisms, so the point cannot be settled from these records alone. Either reading still keeps the same man — or a man in the same household cluster — resident in Buckinghamshire across the whole window.[1] Evidence

The wider Buckinghamshire Gurney households

Aylesbury was not the only Bucks parish holding a John Gurney family in this period. A walk of the Findmypast Buckinghamshire marriage, burial, and baptism indexes turns up at least five distinct seventeenth-century households: Candidate A’s own John Gurney + Alice Oliffe line; John Gurney + Elizabeth at East Claydon (children Elinor 1632 and Samuel 1636; buried East Claydon 17 April 1654); John Gurney + Elizabeth at Chesham (children Andtr and Martha; burials there in July 1672 and 11 June 1678); John Gurney + Anne at Wing (children James 1650 and Elizabeth 1652); and John Gurney + Mary at Cublington (son Isaac baptized 1664 — after the colonial John’s own 1662/3 death, and the most plausible identity for the Bucks John Gurney who later held the Stewkley manor with his son Isaac). A sixth Aylesbury household, Luke Gurney’s (four children indexed 1621–1635), is not a John Gurney line at all, and a seventh, Edward Gurny’s (a son buried 1665, a daughter baptized 1666), is a separate Aylesbury head of household distinct from Candidate A.[5] Every one of these is a real, continuing Buckinghamshire family in the very years the colonial John Gurney was at Weymouth and Braintree — the county was simply not short of Gurneys named John. Beyond these, a longer tail of Buckinghamshire and Chiltern Gurney households — generational predecessors fathering children before 1620, post-1660 baptisms, and single index events with no household profile behind them — has been surfaced and cleared as a group; each is enumerated with its own elimination ground in the case file’s §8.3 and §8.6 tables rather than restated here.[6]

The 1661 Edlesborough marriage and the elimination

Phillimore’s printed Buckinghamshire marriage register for Edlesborough carries a further, later Gurney cluster: William Gurney to Martha Halsey (1660), John Gurney to Mary Kidgell (1661), Samuel Gurney of Bierton to Elizabeth Bunce of Padbury (1662), Thomas Gurney of Hockliffe to Frances Norman (1680), and George Hill of Chesham to Mary Gurney (1685).[7] The 1661 John-and-Mary marriage is materially incompatible with the colonial John Gurney: the Braintree emigrant buried his first wife Mary on 20 September 1661 and married Grizzell Fletcher seven weeks later, on 12 November 1661, both at Braintree. Either this Edlesborough John is Candidate A himself, in which case the 1661 Bucks marriage eliminates him outright on its own, or he is a distinct Bucks John Gurney with a wife also named Mary, in which case he simply accounts for one more English “John + Mary” household that is not the emigrant.

Every reading points the same way. Candidate A’s own chain — Stewkley 1603, Bierton 1628, Aylesbury 1638–1653, and the 1641 certified move into Northamptonshire — places one continuously documented Englishman across exactly the years the Massachusetts John Gurney was building a life at Weymouth and Braintree, dying there in 1662/3. The two records cannot describe the same man. Candidate A is eliminated as the colonial emigrant.[1][3] Evidence

  1. FamilySearch, “England, Births and Christenings, 1538-1975”: Jhon Gurney, christened 21 Feb 1603, Stewkley, Buckinghamshire, son of Jhon Gurney (FS ID JMRS-DX6); John Gurney son of John Gurney, baptized 16 December 1638, Aylesbury; Sarah Gurney, baptized 22 August 1639; Daniell Gurney, baptized 26 December 1645 (FS ID JWN5-W5B); Jonathan Gurney, baptized 22 November 1647 (FS ID JMBC-P2G); Hannah Gurney, baptized 12 November 1653; John Gurney m. Anne Cowheard, 25 October 1638, Saint Mary, Aylesbury (FS ID N2TD-Z9Z). Source ID: fs-england-births-christenings. ↩︎ ↩︎ ↩︎ ↩︎ ↩︎

  2. Findmypast Buckinghamshire Marriage Index (Centre for Buckinghamshire Studies): John Gurney and Alice Oliffe, married 24 April 1628, Bierton with Broughton, Bucks Archives PR16/1/1Q p. 30. Source ID: findmypast-bucks-marriage-index. ↩︎ ↩︎

  3. The National Archives, Kew, E 115/180/113 (Exchequer, King’s Remembrancer, Certificates of Residence), certificate of residence for John Gurney moving from the Aylesbury half-hundred, Buckinghamshire, into Northamptonshire, 1641. The piece has not been examined at image or catalogue level; the reference and its reading reached the project through its own early foundation research, and the reading is unverified. Validation note: sources/validations/tna-e115-180-113-certificate-of-residence-1641.md. Source ID: tna-e115-180-113-certificate-of-residence-1641. ↩︎ ↩︎ ↩︎

  4. Sourcing gap, recorded rather than dropped. The assertion that John Gurney was a tenant at Walgrave, Northamptonshire, in 1650 carries no located archival reference and no registered source; it entered the project through its own early foundation research for the identity case file, where it appears at §8.1 n83 alongside the certificate of residence. It is retained here because it may prove recoverable — Walgrave manorial or rental records would be the pull — but nothing in the elimination depends on it, which stands on the 1638–1653 Aylesbury baptisms alone. ↩︎

  5. Findmypast Buckinghamshire Marriage Index, Burial Index, and Baptism Index, subscription pulls executed 2026-05-09: East Claydon (Elinor 1632, Samuel 1636; burial 17 Apr 1654, Bucks Archives PR51/1/1); Chesham (Andtr, Martha; burials Jul 1672 and 11 Jun 1678, Bucks Archives D/A/T/42); Wing (James 1650, Elizabeth 1652); Cublington (Isaac, three index entries centered on 1664); Aylesbury, Luke Gurney household (Thomas 1621, Elizabeth 1623, Luke 1624, Prudence 1635); Edward Gurny (son buried 2 Feb 1665, Bucks Archives B24; daughter baptized 1666). Source IDs: findmypast-bucks-baptism-index, findmypast-bucks-burial-index, findmypast-bucks-marriage-index, fs-england-births-christenings. ↩︎

  6. The households themselves rest on the Findmypast Buckinghamshire Baptism, Burial, and Marriage indexes (Source IDs: findmypast-bucks-baptism-index, findmypast-bucks-burial-index, findmypast-bucks-marriage-index), FamilySearch’s “England, Buckinghamshire, Church Records, 1217–1994” and “England, Births and Christenings, 1538–1975” (Source IDs: fs-england-buckinghamshire-church-records-1217-1994, fs-england-births-christenings), and the May 2026 supplementary same-name sweep (Source ID: findmypast-john-gurney-2026may-supplementary-same-name-sweep). Cross-reference, not a source: the household-by-household enumeration — Weston Turville, Haddenham, Great Kimble, Hitcham, Ivinghoe, Marsworth, Chenies, the later Aylesbury and Edlesborough marriages, the post-1660 Cublington, High Wycombe, Whitchurch, Stone, Puttenham, Tring, and Northchurch entries — is published as the case file’s §8.3 and §8.6 tables, which this graph treats as the master list of the cleared field rather than replicating row by row. ↩︎

  7. W. P. W. Phillimore and Thomas M. Blagg, eds., Buckinghamshire Parish Registers: Marriages, Volume I (London: Phillimore & Co., 1902), Edlesborough section. Source ID: phillimore-bucks-marriages-vol1. ↩︎