Gurney Genealogy Library Updated 6 June 2026 by Allen Gurney

John Gurney (c. 1609 – 1662/3)

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Tailor, the first Gurney to settle in North America, and son of Francis Gurney, Merchant Taylor of Norfolk and London.

Born
c. 1609–1612, at East Dereham, Norfolk, England. In a 1653 Massachusetts court deposition he gave his age as "about 50," which taken literally points a few years earlier, to about 1603. 1
Died
1662/3, Braintree, Massachusetts. He died intestate; an inventory of his estate was taken at Boston on 16 March 1662/3 and valued at £55 14s 6d. 2
Occupation
Tailor — the trade by which he is named in colonial records, including the 1661 Braintree deed in which he is styled "John Gurney, tailor." 3
Buried
Braintree, Massachusetts; a later memorial places his grave at Elm Street Cemetery. 4
Marriage(s)
Mary (maiden name unknown) — married in England, by the later 1620s. She died at Braintree on 20 September 1661. 5
Grizzell Fletcher — a much-married Braintree widow, married at Braintree on 12 November 1661; John was her fourth husband. 6

Highlights

  • The first Gurney in North America. A tailor who crossed from England around 1640, John is the emigrant ancestor from whom this branch of the American Gurneys descends. He is first recorded in the colony at Weymouth in June 1641. 7
  • Son of Francis Gurney, Merchant Taylor of Norfolk and London. His father was Francis Gurney (G14), by Francis's first wife Margaret Rybett — an identification that matches in trade, in the Norfolk-to-New-England emigrant corridor, and in family circumstance, and that stands after every other documented John Gurney of the period has been weighed and set aside. The evidence pattern and analysis are laid out in the John Gurney case file. 8
  • A craftsman, not a landed man. His New England property is mostly leasehold and grant rights spread across Weymouth, Braintree, and the Mendon frontier rather than a settled estate; he held forty-eight Braintree acres "by lease" and left goods worth only £55 14s 6d. 9
  • A trusted neighbor. Though never a large property holder, John was repeatedly relied on by his Braintree neighbors — he signed the 1645 petition for the new plantation and served as a witness and appraiser for other families' estates. 10
  • The next generation met the frontier's violence. Two of his sons died in King Philip's War — John Jr. in the Mendon massacre of July 1675 and Peter, a soldier in Captain Isaac Johnson's company, in the fighting of 1676 — while a third son, Richard (G12), carried the direct line forward at Weymouth. 11

Children

All were born to his first wife, Mary, the older children in England and the youngest perhaps in Massachusetts.

Name Dates Notes
Sarah GurneyunknownListed first among the children and likely the eldest; no marriage or death record has been located. 12
Mary Gurneyc. 1628Married Daniel Shed at Braintree in 1647; Shed came from Finchingfield, Essex. 13
Richard Gurneyc. 1630–1634G12 in the direct line; of Weymouth; admitted Freeman in 1681; married Rebecca Taylor. 14
John Gurney Jr.c. 1633–1636Of Weymouth and Mendon; killed in the Mendon massacre, July 1675, in King Philip's War. 11
Peter Gurneyc. 1635–1641A soldier in Captain Isaac Johnson's company, mustered at Dedham in December 1675 for the Narragansett campaign; killed in King Philip's War in 1676. 11
Isaac Gurneyc. 1643 (uncertain)Attribution uncertain; if a son, born in Massachusetts. 12

Narrative

John Gurney is the immigrant ancestor of this branch of the family — the first Gurney to cross the Atlantic. A tailor by trade, he appears in the records of Massachusetts Bay by June 1641, when the General Court remitted a fine he had incurred at Weymouth "for want of gunpowder." Over the next two decades he moved among the south-shore towns of Weymouth and Braintree, raised a large family, and died at Braintree in the winter of 1662/3, leaving a modest estate and no will.7

John was the son of Francis Gurney (G14), a Merchant Taylor of Norfolk and London, by Francis's first wife, Margaret Rybett, whom Francis married at Norwich in 1611 — a parentage that the older published genealogies, working without the Norwich marriage or the Norfolk baptisms, had never traced, and which the genealogist Robert Charles Anderson's Great Migration Directory still leaves as "Unknown." Four threads tie John to that household. His trade as a tailor follows from a Merchant Taylor father, since crafts passed through family apprenticeship. Francis lived squarely inside the East Anglia-to-London belt that sent roughly three in five Massachusetts Bay emigrants of the 1630s. His forced sale of all his Norfolk and Suffolk lands in 1634 left an elder son little to expect at home — reason enough to seek opportunity abroad. And John's colonial world is dense with the Essex and Norfolk connections of Francis's family. A baptism in the East Dereham register records John as the son of Francis Gurnie, placing his birth in Norfolk about 1609–1610. The other documented John Gurneys of the period have each been traced to lives that rule them out, leaving Francis's son the origin the surviving record supports. The full evidence pattern — and the points where it turns on inference rather than a single decisive document — is set out in the John Gurney case file.8

In New England, John was a working tradesman rather than a man of property. His land trail reads as a sequence of grant rights and leaseholds rather than an estate: lot rights at Weymouth, forty-eight Braintree acres he occupied "by lease" within the Tyng estate, a house and orchard he sold at Braintree in 1661, and a frontier interest among the proprietors of Mendon. Yet his neighbors trusted him: he signed the 1645 petition for the plantation that became Braintree, and in 1659 he both witnessed Gregory Baxter's will and helped appraise the estate — the work given to steady, respected men. His first wife, Mary, died at Braintree in September 1661, and within weeks he married the often-widowed Grizzell Fletcher. He himself died little more than a year later; the inventory of his goods came to £55 14s 6d. The direct line ran on through his son Richard (G12) at Weymouth, even as two other sons, John Jr. and Peter, were lost in the opening violence of King Philip's War.9

Citations

  1. "Notes: Braintree, Mass., Items," New England Historical and Genealogical Register, vol. 62 (January 1908), p. 94, Suffolk Court Files item no. 188, "John Gurney of Brayntree aged 50 Yeares or therea-abouts," dated 17-1-1652/3, Internet Archive. The c. 1609–1612 birth bracket follows the identification of his parents argued in the John Gurney case file and the Francis Gurney (G14) fact sheet. Source ID: nehgr-62-94. ↩
  2. Suffolk County, Massachusetts, Probate Records, Case #338, John Gurney Senr probate inventory, Braintree, taken at Boston 16 March 1662/3 by Gregory Belcher, Edmund Quincy, and Thomas Faxon; FamilySearch, Suffolk County probate & family court records, 1636–1915, DGS 102840311, images 514 and 516. The amount £55 14s 6d is given in the abstract "Suffolk Wills," New England Historical and Genealogical Register, vol. 12 (1858), p. 53. Source IDs: spr-case-338-john-gurney-probate-1663; nehgr-12-suffolk-wills-1858. ↩
  3. Waldo Chamberlain Sprague, Genealogies of the Families of Braintree, Mass., 1640–1850 (Boston: New England Historic Genealogical Society, 2001), p. 695, John Gurney entry; Samuel A. Bates, The Ancient Iron Works at Braintree, Mass.: The First in America (South Braintree, Mass.: Frank A. Bates, 1898), p. 10, 12 February 1661 deed styling the grantor "John Gurney, tailor." Source IDs: sprague-braintree; bates-ancient-iron-works-braintree-1898. ↩
  4. Find a Grave, memorial 252975617, John Gurney, Elm Street Cemetery, Braintree, Norfolk County, Massachusetts. The memorial's burial place is a useful lead; its accompanying birth and origin details (a 1615 birth in a modern London borough) are anachronistic and are not followed here. Source ID: findagrave-john-gurney-252975617. ↩
  5. Braintree (Mass.), Records of the Town of Braintree, 1640 to 1793, ed. Samuel A. Bates (Randolph, Mass.: D. H. Huxford, 1886), p. 638, death of Mary Gurney 7th month 20, 1661 (Old Style; 20 September 1661 New Style), Internet Archive; Sprague, Genealogies of the Families of Braintree, p. 695, treating Mary's maiden name as unknown. The "Richards" maiden name appears only in later derivative trees, without primary support. Source IDs: braintree-records-1640-1793-1886; sprague-braintree. ↩
  6. Mary Lovering Holman, "Grissell of the Many Marriages," The American Genealogist, vol. 10, no. 2 (October 1933), pp. 70–73, Internet Archive, giving the marriage at Braintree on 12 November 1661 and Grissell's sequence of husbands (Jewell – Griggs – Kibby – Gurney – Burge); Clarence Almon Torrey, New England Marriages Prior to 1700 (Baltimore: Genealogical Publishing Co., 2004), p. 331. The printed Braintree town record, Records of the Town of Braintree (1886), p. 717, enters the corresponding marriage line under a Cheney surname rather than Gurney; the conflict is noted but not resolved here. Source IDs: tag-10-70; torrey-new-england-marriages-prior-1700; braintree-records-1640-1793-1886. ↩
  7. Nathaniel B. Shurtleff, ed., Records of the Governor and Company of the Massachusetts Bay in New England, vol. 1, 1628–1641 (Boston: William White, 1853), p. 331, June 1641 General Court record remitting the fines of John Gurney, James Ludden, and John Porter for want of gunpowder; History of Weymouth, Massachusetts, 4 vols. (Weymouth, Mass.: Weymouth Historical Society, 1923), vol. 3, p. 251. Source IDs: massachusetts-bay-records-v1-1853; history-of-weymouth. ↩
  8. Robert Charles Anderson, The Great Migration Directory: Immigrants to New England, 1620–1640, 2nd ed. (Boston: New England Historic Genealogical Society, 2025), p. 158, origin "Unknown"; the identification with Francis Gurney (G14) rests on the marriage of Francis Gurney and Margaret Rybett at St Martin at Palace, Norwich, 23 September 1611 (Norfolk Record Office, PD 12/1) and on a baptism in the East Dereham register (Norfolk Record Office, PD 86/41) read as "John the son of Francis Gurnie." The identification is built on cumulative indirect evidence rather than a single decisive record, and the 1653 deposition's "aged about 50" would place the birth a few years earlier than the East Dereham baptism; the case file weighs both points in full and estimates the parentage at roughly a sixty percent probability against the remaining unidentified-emigrant residue. The full argument and the East Anglia-to-New England corridor evidence are set out in the John Gurney case file and the Francis Gurney (G14) fact sheet; for the emigration corridor see David Hackett Fischer, Albion's Seed (New York: Oxford University Press, 1989). Source IDs: anderson-gmd-2015; nro-pd-12-1; nro-pd-86-41; fischer-albions-seed-1989. ↩
  9. Gilbert Nash, Historical Sketch of the Town of Weymouth, Massachusetts, from 1622 to 1884 (Weymouth, Mass.: Town of Weymouth, 1885), pp. 258, 270, 278, 281–282, 306, for the Weymouth lot rights; Thomas F. Temple, Suffolk Deeds. Liber IV (Boston: Rockwell and Churchill, 1888), pp. 6, 89a–90, for the forty-eight Braintree acres occupied "by lease" within the Tyng estate; Bates, Ancient Iron Works at Braintree, p. 10, for the 1661 sale of a house and orchard; The Proprietors' Records of the Town of Mendon, Massachusetts (Boston: Rockwell and Churchill, 1899), pp. 13, 43, 46, 152–153, for the Mendon allotment; estate value per Suffolk Probate Case #338 and NEHGR vol. 12 (1858), p. 53. Source IDs: nash-historical-sketch-weymouth-1885; suffolk-deeds-liber-iv-1888; bates-ancient-iron-works-braintree-1898; mendon-proprietors-records-1899; spr-case-338-john-gurney-probate-1663; nehgr-12-suffolk-wills-1858. ↩
  10. Robert Charles Anderson, The Great Migration Begins: Immigrants to New England, 1620–1633, vol. 1 (Boston: New England Historic Genealogical Society, 2012), Gregory Baxter entry, p. 138: John Gurney witnessed Baxter's 1659 will (with Moses Payne and Richard Brackett) and helped take the 7 July 1659 inventory; the 1645 Braintree plantation petition is preserved in the colonial petition record. Source ID: anderson-great-migration-begins-v1-baxter. ↩
  11. Jean Gurney Rigler, The Gurney Family from Aaron to Zuinglius: A Genealogical Dictionary, rev. ed. (Honolulu: J. G. Rigler, 1994), John Gurney-1 children; Sprague, Genealogies of the Families of Braintree, p. 695. John Jr. was among the dead in the Mendon massacre of 14 July 1675, the opening bloodshed of King Philip's War; Peter, "a soldier in Johnson's Co.," was killed in the war in December 1676. Peter's service is recorded at primary level in George Madison Bodge, Soldiers in King Philip's War (Boston: Printed for the Author, 1891), p. 114, which lists "Peeter Gurnay" under Weymouth in Captain Isaac Johnson's company at the Dedham muster of 10 December 1675; he is absent from that company's December 1675 casualty list, consistent with his death later, in 1676. See also the Richard Gurney (G12) fact sheet. Source IDs: bodge-soldiers-king-philips-war-1891; rigler-gurney-family-aaron-zuinglius-1994; sprague-braintree. ↩
  12. Sprague, Genealogies of the Families of Braintree, p. 695, listing the children Sarah, Mary, Richard, John, and Peter; History of Weymouth, Massachusetts, vol. 3, p. 251. Sarah is listed first and is otherwise undocumented; Isaac is a later and uncertain addition, not in the core lists. Source IDs: sprague-braintree; history-of-weymouth. ↩
  13. 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), Internet Archive; Daniel Shed was baptized 25 June 1620 at Finchingfield, Essex, and married Mary Gurney at Braintree in 1647. Mary's marriage bounds her English birth to before 1628. Source ID: shedd-daniel-shed-genealogy-1920. ↩
  14. See the Richard Gurney (G12) fact sheet; Rigler, Gurney Family from Aaron to Zuinglius, Richard-2 entry, for his Weymouth residence, 1681 Freeman admission, and marriage to Rebecca Taylor. Source ID: rigler-gurney-family-aaron-zuinglius-1994. ↩