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

Analysis

Analysis: the 1653 deposition is the only record of John's own person

The 1653 Wilson v. Faxon deposition ('John Gurney of Brayntree aged 50 Yeares or thereabouts') is the only surviving record that attests a personal attribute of John Gurney himself; every other record fixes his property, credit, or a civic/probate office rather than his person. A man documented across four record classes over two decades is thus attested as a person, as opposed to as a landholder, creditor, or estate, by a single line in one court file. (The weight of the stated age and its birth inference are worked in the origin/age analysis, not here.)

Confidence: High

Why this conclusion

Qualifications and conflicts

Topic file location: Colonial record coverage

Relationship map

Technical details
  • Research item: G13-RI-000040
  • Graph revision: 244
  • Machine-readable JSON: /assets/g13-graph/findings/G13-RI-000040.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.