Gurney Genealogy Library Updated 15 July 2026 by Allen Gurney

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

Origin — Bury connections

Expert genealogist Charles Edward Banks assigned John Gurney’s English origin to Bury St Edmunds, Suffolk — the one specific parish any published authority has ever named for him. The attribution rests on nothing but Banks’s own working notes: no ship, no parish register, no will, no apprenticeship indenture. Searched directly, the Bury St Edmunds registers hold no Gurney household that could have fathered the emigrant, and the modern standard — Robert Charles Anderson’s Great Migration Directory — declines Banks and records the origin as “Unknown.” What Banks most plausibly caught was not a birthplace but the Suffolk association of a different, younger John Gurney: the 1636 runaway apprentice of the Bury-area feltmaker John Newgate. Read that way, “Bury St Edmunds” is a mistaken pointer at a real neighbourhood-migration pattern, and it fits the favoured Norfolk origin rather than refuting it. Whether John belongs to the Norfolk Gurneys at all is the identity question, argued in the John Gurney identity case file (§8.5, §10.2), not settled here.

Banks’s Bury St Edmunds memo

Banks’s Topographical Dictionary of 2885 English Emigrants to New England, 1620–1650, edited and published posthumously by Elijah Ellsworth Brownell in 1937, gives the emigrant one line on p. 151:

GURNEY, John | Bury St. Edmunds | [no ship] | Braintree, Massachusetts | Banks Mss.

The origin column reads “Bury St. Edmunds,” but the source column reads only “Banks Mss.” — Banks’s own unpublished notes, with no ship, register, will, or indenture behind it. By the standards Banks applied elsewhere in the same volume, an entry resting solely on “Banks Mss.” is a lead he meant to run down, not a proven origin; he died before he could publish, and Brownell printed the manuscripts as they stood. The placement is not arbitrary, though: the same page sets John amid a genuine Bury St Edmunds emigrant cohort — John Newgate, Clement Chaplin, William Knapp, John Goodrich, Henry Bright, William Townsend, Theodore Atkinson, Peyton Cooke, Samuel Wright — most of them well documented from primary records. Banks was perceiving a real Suffolk neighbourhood-migration pattern and slotting Gurney into it.[1] Evidence

Why “Bury” points to John Newgate of Horningsheath

The cleanest single explanation for that memo stands one name away, in Banks’s own cohort. John Newgate — the Boston feltmaker who in July 1636 brought a runaway apprentice named John Gurney before the governor, obtaining an order that the young man serve until age 24 (three years from the following 29 September) — was himself a Suffolk man: born at Horningsheath (Horringer), about three miles south-west of Bury St Edmunds, and resident at Hessett and Bury St Edmunds, then Southwark, before he emigrated to Boston in 1633.[2][3] An apprentice Newgate carried was therefore most plausibly a young man drawn from Newgate’s own neighbourhood around Bury — a John Gurney who would be “of Bury St Edmunds” in exactly the loose sense a compiler records, identified with the town he trained in or near.

That apprentice is not the Braintree emigrant. His implied birth (about 29 September 1615) is a decade too late for a man deposed “aged about 50” in 1652/3, and Newgate’s own later records name no Gurney; the identity work de-conflates the two Johns on those grounds — see the trade-and-training topic and case file §8.5.[4] The relevant point for origin is narrower: the man who actually carried the Bury/Suffolk tag was the apprentice, and Banks’s note most plausibly tracked him. Evidence

The Bury registers hold no natal Gurney household

Tested against the parish records themselves, Bury St Edmunds yields no Gurney family that could have fathered the emigrant. A Gurney-variant sweep of the St James registers (FamilySearch full-text image group DGS 007413310, covering 1561–1800) returns a single Bury Gurney household: Thomas Gurney and Lidda (Lydia) Broddish, married about 1633–35 — far too late to have produced a man born around 1602–1612. Their children were Juda (baptized c. 1633/4), a John “son to Thomas” registered about 1653/4 after the Commonwealth reopened the register, and a Thomas (c. 1661/2); a separate John Gurney and Elizabeth baptized a William in 1665. The earlier Bury Gurneys are unconnected fragments — a William Gurney’s daughter Bridgett in 1588, a Mary Gurny in a 1620–24 communicant list.[5]

The St Mary parish tells the same story from the other end of life. The National Burial Index records three Gurney burials there in a four-year window — John Gurney buried 11 December 1653, an unnamed Gurney on 6 April 1655, and an unnamed Gurney noted “Wife” on 13 May 1656 — a single continuing Bury Gurney household whose male head, John, was in the ground by the end of 1653. That John cannot be the Braintree emigrant, who was alive in Massachusetts and died there in 1662/3.[6]

Across both Bury parishes, then, the Gurney presence is either post-dated or an unconnected scrap, and the one Bury “John Gurney” of the period was buried in 1653. Bury St Edmunds is cleared as the emigrant’s birthplace. Whatever Banks recorded, it was not a Bury natal record — because none capable of fathering John survives to have been recorded.[5][6] Evidence

What the attribution is worth

Put together, the evidence resolves “Bury St Edmunds” into a lead, not a birthplace — and one that points the same way as the favoured Norfolk hypothesis, not against it. The attribution has no primary support and no surviving Bury natal record behind it; the concrete Bury/Suffolk association of the period belongs to Newgate’s apprentice, a demonstrably different and younger John; and the modern authority, Anderson’s Great Migration Directory (p. 158), independently declines Banks and enters the emigrant’s origin as “Unknown.”[7] A Norwich-born son of Francis Gurney who trained at or near Bury — the Candidate B reading — would satisfy Banks’s note exactly, since it would make John “of Bury” by trade and association without making him Bury-born. So Banks’s memo neither establishes a Suffolk birth nor rebuts a Norfolk one; it records a real East Anglian migration corridor and mis-files the emigrant inside it. The identity conclusion this feeds — that John is the son of Francis Gurney and Margaret Rybett of Norfolk — is carried in the John Gurney identity case file (§10.2), which reaches the same reading of Banks.[4] One later document catches that corridor in miniature. In 1672 Thomas Chaplin of Bury St Edmunds, gent., left £40 “to Mary Gurney my servant” — eight times the £5 he left his own daughter — in the same will that disposed of a debt owing from “Jeremy Houchin, late in New England,” directing that £60 of it, once collected, go to his grandchildren. A Bury Gurney woman in service and a Bury household with money owing out of Boston sit in a single paragraph of one will: precisely the Suffolk⇄Massachusetts traffic Banks was perceiving. It touches the emigrant’s story not at all — it names no John Gurney, and connects to no natal household — but it confirms that the migration corridor Banks mistook for a birthplace was a real and specific thing.[8] Evidence

  1. Charles Edward Banks, Topographical Dictionary of 2885 English Emigrants to New England, 1620–1650, ed. Elijah Ellsworth Brownell (Philadelphia: Bertram Press, 1937), p. 151, John Gurney entry (“Bury St. Edmunds … Banks Mss.”) and the surrounding Bury St Edmunds emigrant cohort (Newgate, Chaplin, Knapp, Goodrich, Bright, Townsend, Atkinson, Cooke, Wright). Sourced only to Banks’s unpublished working notes; no ship, register, will, or indenture. Validation note: sources/validations/banks-brownell-1937.md. Source ID: banks-brownell-1937. ↩︎

  2. WikiTree profile John Newgate (Newgate-14): John Newgate of Horningsheath (Horringer), Suffolk — about three miles south-west of Bury St Edmunds — resident at Hessett, Bury St Edmunds, and Southwark before emigrating to Boston in 1633; feltmaker/hatter. Compiled-genealogy level, used here solely for Newgate’s Suffolk origin location. Validation note: sources/validations/wikitree-newgate-14-horningsheath.md. Source ID: wikitree-newgate-14-horningsheath. ↩︎

  3. John Winthrop, The History of New England from 1630 to 1649, ed. James Savage, vol. 2 (Boston: Little, Brown, 1853), Addenda, p. 422: the 21 July 1636 Boston-court order binding John Newgate’s runaway apprentice John Gurney to serve until age 24, three years from the following 29 September. The record’s full identity treatment (the two-Johns de-conflation) is carried in the trade-and-training topic and case file §8.5. Source ID: winthrop-history-new-england-addenda-1636. ↩︎ ↩︎

  4. The de-conflation rests on two records already cited in this unit. The 21 July 1636 Boston-court order binding Newgate’s apprentice to serve until age twenty-four, three years from the following 29 September — implying a birth about 29 September 1615 — is Winthrop/Savage, History of New England, vol. 2, Addenda, p. 422 (see [3]; Source ID: winthrop-history-new-england-addenda-1636). The Braintree emigrant’s own 1652/3 deposition, “aged 50 or thereabouts,” is “Notes: Braintree, Mass., Items,” New England Historical and Genealogical Register, vol. 62 (January 1908), p. 94, Suffolk Court Files item no. 188 (Source ID: nehgr-62-94), carried as G13-RI-000069 in Origin — age and baptism. The reading is canonically authored as G13-RI-000075 in the staged trade-and-training topic; both cited here cross-unit. Cross-reference, not a source: the case file reaches the same reading of Banks at §8.5 and §10.2. ↩︎ ↩︎

  5. Bury St Edmunds, St James, Suffolk, parish registers 1561–1800, FamilySearch full-text image group DGS 007413310; Gurney-variant sweep, 13 June 2026 (20 result cards; machine-transcript level). The only Bury Gurney household is Thomas Gurney × Lidda (Lydia) Broddish, married c. 1633–35 (children Juda c. 1633/4; John “son to Thomas” c. 1653/4; Thomas c. 1661/2), with a separate John Gurney × Elizabeth baptizing William in 1665; earlier Gurneys (William’s daughter Bridgett 1588; Mary Gurny in a 1620–24 communicant list) are unconnected. Validation note: sources/validations/bury-st-james-registers.md. Source ID: bury-st-james-registers. ↩︎ ↩︎

  6. Findmypast, National Burial Index for England & Wales, three Gurney burials at St Mary, Bury St Edmunds, Suffolk: John Gurney 11 December 1653; [given name not transcribed] Gurney 6 April 1655; [given name not transcribed] Gurney 13 May 1656 (noted “Wife”). The Suffolk Record Office (Bury branch) holds the St Mary register (FL 541/4). Index level. Validation note: sources/validations/findmypast-bury-st-edmunds-st-mary-gurney-burials-1653-1656.md. Source ID: findmypast-bury-st-edmunds-st-mary-gurney-burials-1653-1656. ↩︎ ↩︎

  7. Robert Charles Anderson, The Great Migration Directory: Immigrants to New England, 1620–1640: A Concise Compendium (Boston: NEHGS), John Gurney entry, p. 158, giving the English origin as “Unknown” — an implicit setting-aside of Banks’s Bury St Edmunds attribution under modern Great Migration evidentiary standards. Validation note: sources/validations/anderson-gmd-2015.md. Source ID: anderson-gmd-2015. ↩︎

  8. Joseph James Muskett, Suffolk Manorial Families, vol. 3 pt. 1 (Exeter: William Pollard & Co., 1900), “Chaplin of Semer, Bury, etc.” pedigree, printed p. ~109, abstracting the will of Thomas Chaplin of Bury St Edmunds, gent., “being aged,” dated 24 April 1672 and proved 25 November 1672 (Archdeaconry of Sudbury reg. 1672, fo. 349): “To Mary Gurney my servant £40,” alongside the debt “owing to me from Jeremy Houchin, late in New England.” Jeremy Houchin was a Boston tanner and selectman. The datum bears on the Bury St Edmunds–New England migration milieu, not on the emigrant’s parentage, and names no John Gurney. Validation note: sources/validations/muskett-suffolk-manorial-families-v3-1900.md. Source ID: muskett-suffolk-manorial-families-v3-1900. ↩︎