These research notes are provided as-is and contain supplementary working research.
Negative result
Negative: no tailoring tools or cloth in the estate
The 1663 estate inventory contains no tool or stock of the tailoring trade — no shears, needles, thimble, pressing- or goose-iron, yard-measure, or cloth/fabric — despite John being styled 'John Gurney, tailor' in his 1661/2 Monatiquot conveyance. The absence does not unsay the trade (the deed is direct evidence) but qualifies its centrality to his late-life economy, whose appraised value sat in land-rights and livestock; the 'pincers' listed beside the pewter are a general household/smith's tool, not a tailor's implement.
Search scope
- Searched: Suffolk County Probate Records (manuscript inventory) with the NEHGR vol. 12 abstract — John Gurney Senr estate inventory, Braintree, 16 March 1663 (SPR Case #338)
- Coverage window: 1663 to 1663
- Search: Full line-by-line review of the appraised inventory for any tool, implement, or stock diagnostic of the tailoring trade (shears, needles, thimble, pressing/goose iron, yard/measure, or cloth/fabric).
- Results reviewed: 1
- Limitations: The inventory is a single appraisal snapshot at death; trade tools sold with the 1661/2 Monatiquot house, passed to a son, or worn out before March 1663 would leave no trace here.; The manuscript readings are a working transcription; a few low-value line items are abbreviated, but no plausible reading of any line yields a tailoring tool or a stock of cloth.; Appraisers routinely grouped small low-value goods; a needle-and-thread kit below their notice cannot be excluded, though shears, a pressing iron, or cloth stock would normally have been itemized.
Why this conclusion
- Supported by Evidence 1663 probate inventory: itemized movable estate (£55 14s 6d)The full inventory line-scan showing no tailoring tool or cloth is the evidentiary basis for the occupational negative.
- Required by Finding Occupation: a tailor by trade, a husbandman by economyThe 1663 inventory's absence of any tailoring tool (the material-life negative) qualifies how central the needle remained to his late-life economy.
Qualifications and conflicts
- Qualifies Evidence 1661/2 Gurney–Thayer deed ('John Gurney, tailor')The estate's silence on tailoring equipment qualifies how central the 'tailor' occupation of the 1661/2 Thayer deed was to John's economy at death (cross-topic to braintree-community).
Sources
- Suffolk County, Massachusetts, Probate Records, Case #338, John Gurney Senr probate inventory, Braintree, 16 March 1663; manuscript image supplied by Allen Gurney, file 102840311_00516.jpg., Suffolk County Probate Records, Case #338, full inventory line-scan, 16 March 1663
Topic file location: Colonial material life
Technical details
- Research item:
G13-RI-000036 - Graph revision:
244 - Machine-readable JSON:
/assets/g13-graph/findings/G13-RI-000036.json
This is one research item from the John Gurney research graph; the fuller narrative treatment is in the linked topic above and the research library.