Gurney Genealogy Library Updated 4 June 2026 by Allen Gurney

Nathan Gurney of Little Comfort (c.1700–after 1751)

Nathan Gurney was not a direct ancestor; he and his wife Sarah Harden raised the direct-line ancestor Benjamin Gurney (G9).

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Born
About 1700–1704, probably at Weymouth or the new Little Comfort settlement. No birth record survives; his 1725 marriage and his first child's 1727 birth place him in that bracket. He was a son of John Gurney, the Weymouth man who settled south Abington, and a grandson of Richard Gurney of Weymouth. 1
Died
Not established in surviving records. His youngest recorded child was born in 1751, and he headed a Little Comfort household through the middle of the century. 2
Home
Little Comfort, the milling district of south Abington — then within the bounds of Bridgewater, later South Abington, today Whitman. His father had started the Little Comfort sawmill there. 3
Marriage
Married Sarah Harden (born 9 April 1707, Abington), daughter of John Harden of Little Comfort, blacksmith, and Mary Littlefield, on 12 May 1725. Sarah was the sister of Jane Harden, the mother of Benjamin Gurney (G9). 4
Relationship
Related, tied to G9. Nathan was a first cousin of Benjamin Gurney (G10) — both grandsons of Richard Gurney (G12) — and the husband of G9's maternal aunt. He and Sarah raised the young Benjamin (G9). He is not himself in the direct ancestor line. 5

Highlights

  • He raised a direct-line ancestor. Nathan and his wife Sarah Harden brought up Benjamin Gurney (G9), born in 1730 of an unmarried liaison, in their Little Comfort home. 5
  • Doubly kin to the boy. Sarah was Benjamin's mother's sister; Nathan was his father's first cousin. Fostering the child kept him inside both his Harden and his Gurney families. 5
  • Of the Little Comfort Gurneys. His father, John Gurney, came from Weymouth about 1690, settled the south part of old Abington, and started its first sawmill — the family seat for the next century. 3
  • A large household. Nathan and Sarah had nine recorded children between 1727 and 1751 — Rebecca, Lemuel, Elijah, Noah, Nathan, Silas, Sarah, Jacob, and John — and Benjamin grew up among them. 6
  • Ancestor of the Whitman Gurneys. His descendants anchored South Abington and Whitman for generations. One great-grandson, also Nathan Gurney, became a long-serving selectman and state legislator — a different man, often confused with the foster father. 7

Narrative

Nathan Gurney belongs to the Abington side of the family rather than the direct line, but he sits at one of its turning points: he and his wife raised the boy who carries the line forward. The Gurneys had reached old Abington a generation earlier, when Nathan’s father, John Gurney, came over from Weymouth about 1690 and settled the south part of the town — then still within Bridgewater — at the milling hamlet called Little Comfort, where he built one of its first sawmills. John was a son of Richard Gurney of Weymouth (G12); his brother Benjamin (G11) is the direct ancestor, which makes Nathan and the direct-line Benjamin Gurney (G10) first cousins. 35

In 1725 Nathan married Sarah Harden, a blacksmith’s daughter from Little Comfort and a sister of Jane Harden. Five years later Jane gave birth to a son, Benjamin, baptized at the First Church of Abington on 30 May 1730 with only his mother named. The child was taken into Nathan and Sarah’s household — a natural landing place, since Sarah was the baby’s aunt and Nathan his father’s cousin. Benjamin grew up there alongside the couple’s own children: Rebecca, born in 1727; Lemuel, born the same year as Benjamin; and, in the years that followed, Elijah, Noah, Nathan, Silas, Sarah, Jacob, and John. 46

What became of Nathan himself is not recorded; no death date or estate has yet surfaced, and the last of his children was born in 1751. His line, however, did not leave. While the direct-line Benjamin moved on to Bridgewater and ultimately to Cummington in the western hills, Nathan’s sons and grandsons stayed in south Abington, gave their name to houses still standing in Whitman, and produced — three generations on — another Nathan Gurney prominent enough in town affairs that the two are easily mistaken for one another. 27

Citations

  1. Birth bracket inferred from his 1725 marriage and first child's 1727 birth; parentage and grandparentage from Benjamin Hobart, History of the Town of Abington, Plymouth County, Massachusetts, from its First Settlement (Boston: T. H. Carter and Son, 1866), Appendix Gurney register, pp. 383–384, and Jean Gurney Rigler, The Gurney Family from Aaron to Zuinglius, rev. ed. (Honolulu: J. G. Rigler, 1994). Source IDs: hobart-benjamin-history-abington-1866, rigler-gurney-family-aaron-zuinglius-1994. return
  2. Hobart, History of the Town of Abington (1866), Appendix Gurney register, p. 384 (youngest recorded child John, b. May 1751; no death recorded for Nathan). Source ID: hobart-benjamin-history-abington-1866. return
  3. Hobart, History of the Town of Abington (1866), Appendix Gurney register, p. 383 ("John Gurney… came from Weymouth, and settled in the south part of this town… about the year 1690") and p. 3 (first Little Comfort sawmill, 1698); Rigler, Gurney Family (1994), identifying John Gurney as founder of the Little Comfort mill. Source IDs: hobart-benjamin-history-abington-1866, rigler-gurney-family-aaron-zuinglius-1994. return
  4. Sarah Harden's birth (9 April 1707) and parentage from Vital Records of Abington, Massachusetts, to the Year 1850, vol. 1, and John Harden's 1751 Plymouth County will (daughter Sarah Gurney); marriage of Nathan Gurney and Sarah Harden, 12 May 1725, from The Neverending Hobby — John Gurney, US 1636, corroborated by the October-1727 birth of their first child in Hobart's register. Source IDs: abington-vr-1850-vol1, plymouth-probate-john-harden-1751-will, neverending-hobby-john-gurney-us-1636, hobart-benjamin-history-abington-1866. return
  5. Relationship: Rigler, Gurney Family (1994), entry Benjamin Gurney-5, pp. 21–22 ("raised in Abington by Nathan-4 & Sarah (Harden) Gurney, his mother's sister"); and the shared descent from Richard Gurney of Weymouth (G12) through John Gurney (Nathan's father) and Benjamin Gurney-3 (G11, the direct ancestor) in Hobart's register and Rigler. Source IDs: rigler-gurney-family-aaron-zuinglius-1994, hobart-benjamin-history-abington-1866. return
  6. Hobart, History of the Town of Abington (1866), Appendix Gurney register, p. 384 (children of Nathan: Rebecca 1727, Lemuel 1730, Elijah 1732, Noah 1735, Nathan 1739, Silas 1743, Sarah 1745, Jacob 1748, John 1751). Source ID: hobart-benjamin-history-abington-1866. return
  7. Hobart, History of the Town of Abington (1866), Appendix Gurney register, pp. 385–386, and main-text biography of Nathan Gurney, Jr. (d. 11 Jan. 1851); Massachusetts Cultural Resource Information System inventory WHI.307 ("Gurney, Nathan and Martha Pullman House," Whitman). Source IDs: hobart-benjamin-history-abington-1866, macris-mhc. return