Gurney Genealogy Library Updated 4 June 2026 by Allen Gurney

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

Nathan Gurney of Little Comfort / South Abington Notes

Research notes for fact-sheets/g09-nathan-gurney-related-fact-sheet.md. Nathan Gurney is a collateral figure tied to the direct line at G9: he and his wife Sarah Harden raised the direct-line ancestor Benjamin Gurney (G9), baptized at Abington 30 May 1730.

Who he was, and why he matters

Nathan Gurney lived at Little Comfort — the milling district of south Abington (within the old Bridgewater bounds, later South Abington, now Whitman). He was a son of John Gurney, the Weymouth man who settled there about 1690 and started the Little Comfort sawmill, and therefore a grandson of Richard Gurney of Weymouth (G12). That makes Nathan a first cousin of Benjamin Gurney-4 (G10) — both were grandsons of Richard — and the cousin’s household was where Benjamin (G10)'s out-of-wedlock son was raised.[1][2]

Nathan married Sarah Harden (b. 9 Apr. 1707, Abington), a daughter of John Harden of Little Comfort, blacksmith, and Mary Littlefield, and a sister of Jane/Jean Harden, the mother of Benjamin G9. So when Benjamin was born in 1730, Nathan and Sarah were doubly his kin: Sarah was his maternal aunt; Nathan was his father’s first cousin. Rigler states the upbringing directly — Benjamin “was raised in Abington by Nathan-4 & Sarah (Harden) Gurney, his mother’s sister” — and Hobart independently documents the household that took him in.[1:1][3][4]

The household Benjamin grew up in

Hobart’s Abington Gurney register gives Nathan and Sarah’s children with birth months and years drawn from the town records:[1:2]

  • Rebecca, b. October 1727
  • Lemuel, b. October 1730
  • Elijah, b. 1732
  • Noah, b. May 1735
  • Nathan, b. November 1739
  • Silas, b. June 1743
  • Sarah, b. March 1745
  • Jacob, b. March 1748
  • John, b. May 1751

Benjamin G9 (bpt. 30 May 1730) was almost exactly the age of Lemuel and slightly younger than Rebecca; he grew up among roughly nine Gurney foster-siblings at Little Comfort. Rebecca’s October-1727 birth corroborates the 12 May 1725 marriage date that the compiled genealogies give for Nathan and Sarah Harden.[1:3][5]

No death date for Nathan is recorded in the examined sources; his youngest documented child was born in 1751.[1:4]

The Little Comfort origin — John Gurney, the Abington ancestor

Hobart: “John Gurney, the ancestor of most of the name in Abington, came from Weymouth, and settled in the south part of this town, then a part of Bridgewater, about the year 1690. He died about 1715; and, it seems, intestate… children, among whom were Richard, David and Nathan.”[1:5]

This John is, on convergent evidence, the John Gurney-3 (son of Richard-2/G12) whom Rigler names as the founder of the Little Comfort mill: same Weymouth origin, same south-Abington settlement, same intestacy, a son Nathan. The identification ties the foster-household directly back into the direct line — Nathan’s father John and the direct-line Benjamin Gurney-3 (G11) were brothers, both sons of Richard Gurney (G12).[1:6][2:1]

At least three Nathan Gurneys — disambiguation

The Abington/Whitman Gurneys produced several Nathans; conflating them is the obvious trap:

  1. The foster-father Nathan (this subject) — son of John, m. Sarah Harden ~1725, children 1727–1751.
  2. Nathan, his son (b. November 1739) — “married a Palmer (sister of Silas’ wife); and had Nathan, Mary and Lebbeus.”[1:7]
  3. Nathan Gurney, Jr., Esq. (d. 11 Jan. 1851) — the foster-father’s great-grandson, the “Nathan, son of Nathan” of Hobart’s fourth generation. A schoolteacher, selectman from 1799 (twenty-four years), state representative, delegate to the 1820 Massachusetts constitutional convention, later a Boston alderman and Suffolk County senator. He married a daughter of Elijah Shaw, then Martha “Pullman/Pulling,” then Sarah Whitman; sons Nahum P. and Ephraim Whitman Gurney; daughters Dianthe and Marilla.[6]

The famous Whitman house “Gurney, Nathan and Martha Pullman House,” 496 Plymouth St (Massachusetts Historical Commission inventory WHI.307, c. 1816), belongs to #3, not to the foster-father.[7]

MACRIS / built-environment leads

The Massachusetts Cultural Resource Information System (MACRIS, mhc-macris.net) lists several Gurney properties that map onto this family’s footprint. Inventory forms (the “B-form” PDFs) often carry a builder genealogy worth pulling. (Availability: the MACRIS database and most inventory forms are available online.)

Collateral Abington/Whitman (Nathan’s descendants), highest relevance:

  • WHI.307 — Gurney, Nathan and Martha Pullman House, 496 Plymouth St, Whitman, c. 1816 → Nathan Gurney, Jr. (d. 1851).
  • WHI.325 — Gurney, Jeremiah and Mary Fullerton House, 213 Washington St, Whitman, c. 1795 → Jeremiah Gurney, son of Noah, grandson of the foster-father.
  • WHI.283 — Gurney, Jonathan Reed and Deborah C. Reed House, 364 Franklin St, Whitman, c. 1816 → a Jonathan R. Gurney of this stock.
  • Other Whitman Gurney entries (WHI.305 Daniel; WHI.314 Edwin; WHI.322 Hersey–Lydia Gurney; WHI.72 F. H. Gurney Building) are likely the same descent.

Direct-line leads (the Cummington migration of Benjamin G9), to pursue on the G8/G9 companions rather than here:

  • CUM.115 — Gurney, “Ase” House, 51 Main St, Cummington, 1816; CUM.151 — Gurney, Asa House, 75 Mount Rd, Cummington, 1808. Candidate seats of G9’s son Asa Gurney (b. 24 Oct. 1758, m. Molly Reed) or his descendants. PLF.14 (Plainfield) and ASF.241 (Ashfield) are neighboring-town Gurneys of the same Hampshire-County diaspora.

Two-Benjamin collateral (the Rochester half-brother line):

  • ROC.938 — East Rochester Cemetery, Gurney, Benjamin Stone, 1828 → a strong candidate for the gravestone of the Revolutionary-War Benjamin Gurney (d. 4 July 1828), the Sarah-Morse half-brother in the two-Benjamin problem.

Open questions

  1. Nathan’s vital dates. Birth (implied c. 1700–1704), exact marriage record at Abington, and death/probate are not yet pinned to primary record images. (Unknown online.)
  2. Guardianship of Benjamin. No primary guardianship, church, or estate record yet places Benjamin in Nathan’s household; Hobart and Rigler are both compiled. A loose Plymouth County file or Abington church record would upgrade the fostering from compiled statement to documented fact. (Unknown online.)
  3. John Gurney-3’s estate. Hobart says he died “about 1715… intestate.” A Plymouth County administration or division record would confirm the Little Comfort succession and the children Richard/David/Nathan. (Unknown online.)

Sources consulted

  • Benjamin Hobart, History of the Town of Abington (1866), Appendix Gurney register pp. 383–386 and main-text Nathan Gurney, Jr. biography.[1:8][6:1]
  • Jean Gurney Rigler, The Gurney Family from Aaron to Zuinglius (rev. ed., 1994).[3:1][2:2]
  • John Harden’s 1751 Plymouth County will.[4:1]
  • The Neverending Hobby — John Gurney, US 1636.[5:1]
  • Massachusetts Cultural Resource Information System (MACRIS).[7:1]

  1. Benjamin Hobart, History of the Town of Abington, Plymouth County, Massachusetts, from its First Settlement (Boston: T. H. Carter and Son, 1866), Appendix, “Gurney” family register, pp. 383–386; verbatim extract at sources/corpus_supplement/hobart-1866-abington-gurney-register-extract.md; Internet Archive item historyoftownofa00hoba. Source ID: hobart-benjamin-history-abington-1866. ↩︎ ↩︎ ↩︎ ↩︎ ↩︎ ↩︎ ↩︎ ↩︎ ↩︎

  2. Rigler, Gurney Family from Aaron to Zuinglius (1994), entries BENJAMIN GURNEY-3 and BENJAMIN GURNEY-4, pp. 19–21, identifying John Gurney-3 (Richard-2) as founder of the Little Comfort mill and the Weymouth-to-Abington Gurney settlement. Source ID: rigler-gurney-family-aaron-zuinglius-1994. ↩︎ ↩︎ ↩︎

  3. Jean Gurney Rigler, The Gurney Family from Aaron to Zuinglius: Some Descendants of Richard Gurney Who Settled at Weymouth, MA before 1656, rev. and expanded ed. (Honolulu: J. G. Rigler, 1994), entry BENJAMIN GURNEY-5, pp. 21–22 (“raised in Abington by Nathan-4 & Sarah (Harden) Gurney, his mother’s sister”). Source ID: rigler-gurney-family-aaron-zuinglius-1994. ↩︎ ↩︎

  4. Massachusetts. Probate Court (Plymouth County), record-book will of John Harden of Bridgewater, blacksmith, dated 17 September 1751, proved 7 October 1751, manuscript pp. 383–384; names daughter Sarah Gurney and daughter Jane Spear and grandson Benjamin Gurney. Source ID: plymouth-probate-john-harden-1751-will. ↩︎ ↩︎

  5. “John Gurney, US 1636,” The Neverending Hobby, public compiled genealogy, giving Nathan Gurney’s marriage to Sarah Harden on 12 May 1725. Use as secondary compiled genealogy. Source ID: neverending-hobby-john-gurney-us-1636. ↩︎ ↩︎

  6. Hobart, History of the Town of Abington (1866), main-text biography of Nathan Gurney, Jr. (selectman from 1799, state representative, 1820 constitutional-convention delegate, Boston alderman and Suffolk senator, d. 11 Jan. 1851), with the fourth-generation register entry “Nathan, son of Nathan” (pp. 385–386). Source ID: hobart-benjamin-history-abington-1866. ↩︎ ↩︎

  7. Massachusetts Cultural Resource Information System (MACRIS), Massachusetts Historical Commission, mhc-macris.net, inventory entries WHI.307, WHI.325, WHI.283, CUM.115, CUM.151, ROC.938 (Gurney properties). Source ID: macris-mhc. ↩︎ ↩︎