Gurney Genealogy Library Updated 15 July 2026 by Allen Gurney

Amos Gurney (1770 – before 1850)

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Cummington, Massachusetts farmer; married Ruth Gilbert; widow Ruth later joined son Willis at Flushing.

Born
About 1770, probably at Bridgewater in Plymouth County, Massachusetts. His father sold the family's Abington land that June and moved the household west to Cummington late in the year, so the precise birthplace sits right on the line between the old home and the new. Son of Benjamin Gurney (G9) and Elizabeth Harden. 1
Died
Before 1850 — by which year his widow Ruth had joined their son Willis at Flushing, Queens, New York. Where and exactly when Amos died is not known. 2
Occupation
Farmer, Cummington, Hampshire County, Massachusetts. Head of household in the 1800 federal census, with a young family of several small children. 3
Marriage
Ruth Gilbert (born about 1772) — married 29 December 1790 at Cummington, Massachusetts. 4

Highlights

  • Born in the year the family moved to the Massachusetts hill country. His father sold the Abington land in June 1770 and bought into Cummington — then a raw frontier town called "Town No. 5" — with Silas Reed that November. Amos's birth fell almost exactly at the family's transplant from old Plymouth County to the western edge of settlement. 5
  • Six children, recorded in the town books. Amos and Ruth had Amos (who died at four), Willard (who lived a single day), Hannah, Willis, Ruth, and Nathan, all entered in the Cummington town records between 1792 and 1802. The fourth, Willis (G7), carried the line on to New York. 6
  • He vanishes from the record after 1802. Amos left Cummington sometime after his youngest son was born; family memory points to Flushing on Long Island, but no Gurney appears in the 1820 Flushing census, and no deed, will, or death record for Amos has ever surfaced. He was gone before 1850. 7
  • His widow is the only firm later trace. By 1850 Ruth, then about 78, was living in Flushing in the household of their son Willis — the single record that shows where the family finally landed. 8

Children

Name Dates Notes
Amos Gurney1792 – 1796Died in childhood, age four. 6
Willard Gurney1794Born and died the same day, 6 March. 6
Hannah Gurneyb. 1795Born 7 May. 6
Willis Gurneyc. 1793–96 — before 1870Direct line (G7); tailor of Flushing, Queens, New York. The town clerk entered his birth out of order and marked the year "1793 (?)"; census ages point to the mid-1790s. 9
Ruth Gurneyb. 1800Born 4 January. 6
Nathan Gurneyb. 1802Born 2 April. 6

Narrative

Amos Gurney is the Cummington generation. His father had sold the Abington land in June 1770 and bought into Cummington — then a raw frontier town in the Massachusetts hill country, freshly surveyed as "Town No. 5" — later that same year, and Amos was born into the middle of that move. Family memory placed his birth at Bridgewater, his father's older Plymouth County home, but with the household in transit the precise birthplace is genuinely uncertain. 1

His adult life played out at Cummington. He married Ruth Gilbert there on 29 December 1790, and over the next dozen years the town books recorded six children — two of whom, a first son named Amos and an infant Willard, died young. The 1800 census catches the household exactly as the birth records predict: Amos and Ruth, both in their thirties, with one small boy and two small girls — the three children then living once the first Amos and the infant Willard are set aside. 463

Then the record goes quiet. Sometime after his youngest son Nathan was born in 1802, Amos moved his family out of Cummington. Family tradition sends him to Flushing on Long Island, yet the 1820 census there lists no Gurney at all, and no deed, will, or grave has been found to mark where he went or when he died. The one firm later glimpse is indirect: by 1850 his widow Ruth, about seventy-eight, was living in Flushing with their son Willis — the tailor who had carried the family into New York. Whether Amos reached Flushing himself and died there, or died earlier in Massachusetts while Ruth followed Willis afterward, remains unsettled. Either way, the move that would shape the family's next century began in his generation. 78

Citations

  1. Parentage and probable Bridgewater birthplace: Jean Gurney Rigler, The Gurney Family from Aaron to Zuinglius (rev. ed., Honolulu, 1994), Amos Gurney entry — "b. probably in Bridgewater MA, s/o Benjamin & Elizabeth (Harden) Gurney." For the June 1770 sale of the Abington land and the 5 November 1770 Cummington purchase that bracket his birth, see Helen H. Foster and William W. Streeter, Only One Cummington (Cummington Historical Commission, 1974), p. 390. ↩
  2. Amos's widow Ruth is enumerated, aged about 78, in the household of her son Willis at Flushing in the 1850 federal census; Amos himself does not appear in any record after 1802, and his death date and place are unknown. Rigler, Gurney Family from Aaron to Zuinglius (1994), Amos Gurney entry: "He probably died before 1850 when Ruth, age 78 was shown living with her son Willis." ↩
  3. U.S. Federal Census, 1800, Cummington, Hampshire County, Massachusetts — Amos Gurney, head of a household of five: one male and two females under 10, with one male and one female aged 26–44 (Series M32, Roll 15). The one boy and two girls under 10 match the three children then living — Willis, Hannah, and the infant Ruth. ↩
  4. Marriage of Amos Gurney and Ruth Gilbert, 29 December 1790, Cummington, Massachusetts; Ruth born about 1772. Cummington town vital records; corroborated in Rigler, Gurney Family from Aaron to Zuinglius (1994). ↩
  5. Foster and Streeter, Only One Cummington (1974), p. 390. ↩
  6. Births and deaths of the six children are entered in the Cummington town vital records (indexed in "Massachusetts, Town Clerk, Vital and Town Records, 1626–2001," FamilySearch) and are listed together in Rigler, Gurney Family from Aaron to Zuinglius (1994), Amos Gurney entry: Amos (1792–96), Willard (1794), Hannah (1795), Willis, Ruth (1800), Nathan (1802). ↩
  7. Rigler, Gurney Family from Aaron to Zuinglius (1994), Amos Gurney entry: "He moved his family from Cummington after 1802 to somewhere & perhaps afterwards to Flushing, Long Island, NY but there were no Gurneys listed in the Fed. Census of 1820 in Flushing." No deed, probate, or burial record for Amos has been located. ↩
  8. U.S. Federal Census, 1850, Flushing, Queens County, New York — Ruth Gurney, aged 78, in the household of Willis Gurney. ↩
  9. See the Willis Gurney (G7) fact sheet. The Cummington town register enters Willis out of sequence with the clerk's own question mark ("Feb. 23 1793 (?)"); the flagged year cannot stand beside elder brother Amos's birth on 5 November 1792, and the 1850 census age and Willis's 1814 militia service point to the mid-1790s, so the year is left open. ↩