Open question

Unresolved John-Jr.-line leads: the Nevis-will Mary and the Taunton Cooper marriage

Two leads point past the John Jr./Ruth household without yet reaching it. First, whether the "Mary Gurney the daughter of John Gurney" named in the 1699 Nevis will of the merchant John Lewis (proved 1701) is John Jr.'s daughter and a granddaughter of G13. The will's kinswoman "Grisell Lloyd daughter of James Lloyd," bequeathed 10 pounds immediately before the Mary Gurney legacy, is now verified as the daughter of James Lloyd, merchant of Boston (grandson of Sir John Lloyd 1st Bt.), born Jamaica c. 1685 and married John Eastwick 1703; the sole executor, Henry Lloyd of Bristol, is an older kinsman of the same trading family, not the younger Boston Henry. This places the whole legatee circle in the Boston-Shelter Island-Nevis-Bristol merchant elite, exactly the milieu in which a New-England-born granddaughter of John Gurney would plausibly appear, and the register image (PROB 11/461) confirms the stand-alone wording. But the will gives Mary no residence or kinship qualifier, and a West-Indies Mary Gurney of unrelated origin cannot be excluded, so the identification is a plausible (~45-55%) but unproven lead. On the repo side, no later marriage or death is recorded for the Mendon Mary (John Jr. and Ruth's daughter in the Mendon town book), so nothing there cuts against the reading (E9). Second, whether the Elizabeth Gurney who married Timothy Cooper at Taunton on 16 October 1706 is a child or grandchild of John Jr. and Ruth carried into Ruth's Bundy household, which remains unconfirmed by any connecting record.

Date: 1699/1701 Nevis will lead; 1706 Taunton Cooper-Gurney marriage lead

Topic file location: Family — Mendon: John Jr. and Ruth Bundy