Finding

Candidate A eliminated: continuous Buckinghamshire/Northamptonshire residence, 1603-1653

Candidate A's own chain -- the 1603 Stewkley baptism, the 1628 Bierton marriage to Alice Oliffe, the 1638-1653 Aylesbury family group, a 1641 government certificate of residence recording his move into Northamptonshire, and a 1650 Walgrave, Northamptonshire tenancy -- places one continuously documented Englishman in Buckinghamshire and Northamptonshire across exactly the years the Massachusetts John Gurney was building a life at Weymouth and Braintree, dying there in 1662/3. The 1661 Edlesborough John Gurney x Mary Kidgell marriage reinforces the same conclusion from a second angle: either it is Candidate A himself, eliminating him outright on his own English marriage seven weeks after the Braintree John buried his own first wife Mary and remarried, or it is a distinct Bucks household that simply accounts for one more English 'John + Mary' who is not the emigrant. The wider Bucks household map shows the county was in no way short of Gurneys named John, so the surname match carries little weight on its own. Candidate A is eliminated as the colonial emigrant.

Confidence: High

Topic file location: Identity — Candidate A: Aylesbury, Buckinghamshire