These research notes are provided as-is and contain supplementary working research.
Finding
Second marriage: John Gurney m. widow Grizzell, Braintree 12 Nov 1661
John Gurney married the widow Grizzell — 'Grissell of the many marriages' — at Braintree on 12 November 1661, by Peter Brackett, as the fourth of her five husbands (Thomas Jewell, Humphrey Griggs, Henry Kibby, John Gurney, and, after John's 1663 death, John Burge in 1667). The marriage is attested directly as John Gurney by Holman's TAG marriage-chain study and by Torrey, independent of the misread town record. Grizzell's compiled maiden name Fletcher (daughter of Robert Fletcher of Chelmsford, Essex) is a colonial attribution and carries no bearing on John Gurney's English origin.
Date: 12 November 1661, Braintree
Why this conclusion
- Supported by Finding 'John Cheny' of the 1661 Braintree record = John GurneyThe resolved town-record reading corroborates the (independently attested) second marriage to Grizzell.
Qualifications and conflicts
- Qualifies Negative result Negative: no vital or church record fixes John's birth, marriage, death, or burialCross-unit: the Braintree marriage and wife-death lines, now read as Gurney, qualify the record-coverage negative that no vital record fixes John's life events — two Braintree town-record vital lines do survive for him, under a misread surname, though they still fix neither his birth nor his origin.
Related context
- Context from Finding Two Gurney lot-holders at post-1667 Mendon: the son and the widowGrisel's will, naming her as already wife to John Burge, extends the Fletcher-Jewell-Griggs-Kibby-Gurney-Burge remarriage chain established for Grizzell in the wives-and-marriages unit.
Sources
- Braintree (Mass.). Records of the Town of Braintree, 1640 to 1793. Edited by Samuel A. Bates. Randolph, Mass.: D. H. Huxford, printer, 1886., p. 717 (the 12 Nov 1661 marriage line)
- Holman, Mary Lovering. "Grissell of the Many Marriages." The American Genealogist, vol. 10, no. 2 (October 1933), pp. 70-73., pp. 70-73
12 Nov. 1661 Braintree, by Peter Brackett, John Gurney Sr.
- Torrey, Clarence Almon. New England Marriages Prior to 1700. Baltimore, MD: Genealogical Publishing Co., 2004. Page 331, Gurney entries. Accessed via Ancestry.com, U.S., New England Marriages Prior to 1700 (Provo, UT: Ancestry.com Operations Inc., 2012), database collection 3824., p. 331, Gurney block
John (1603-1663) & 2/wf Grezell (Fletcher)(Jewell)(Griggs) Kibbee ... 12 Nov 1661 Braintree
Appears in
- John Gurney fact sheet — Vitals — Marriage(s): 'Grizzell Fletcher — a much-married Braintree widow, married at Braintree on 12 November 1661; John was her fourth husband.'
Topic file location: Family — wives and marriages
Technical details
- Research item:
G13-RI-000062 - Graph revision:
244 - Machine-readable JSON:
/assets/g13-graph/findings/G13-RI-000062.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.