These research notes are provided as-is and contain supplementary working research.
Negative result
No John Gurney in the Norwich freemen or apprentice registers
The Norwich city freemen register (Millican, 1548-1713) and the enrolled Norwich apprentice-indenture index (Rising & Millican, NRS 29) record no John Gurney freedom admission and no enrolled apprenticeship in the colonial-emigrant window, c.1615-1660. The registers' Gurney content is otherwise Elizabethan (a John Gurney freed not by apprenticeship in 1560/61; a John Gurney cordwainer dead by 1580) plus a single seventeenth-century entry - James Gurney, son of Francis of St Peter Parmentergate, bound at Michaelmas 1627 for seven years and admitted freeman under Henry Bond in January 1648 - which is a Norwich-side record of a Francis Gurney household, not the emigrant. The East Anglian formal trade-transmission pathway thus carries no record of John's training.
Search scope
- Searched: Percy Millican, Register of the Freemen of Norwich 1548-1713 (1934); Winifred M. Rising & Percy Millican, Index of Indentures of Norwich Apprentices, Norfolk Record Society vol.29 (1959) — Norwich city freemen register and enrolled apprentice-indenture index
- Coverage window: 1615 to 1660
- Search: Gurney-variant search of both published Norwich corporate registers for any John Gurney freedom admission or enrolled apprenticeship in the emigrant window.
- Results reviewed: 6
- Limitations: Only enrolled indentures and admitted freedoms are captured; a Norwich youth trained by a master who never enrolled the indenture, or who never took up the city freedom, would not appear.; The only seventeenth-century Gurney is James, son of Francis of St Peter Parmentergate (bound 1627, freed 1648) - a Norwich-side witness supporting the two-Francis separation, not the emigrant John.; OCR and index coverage of the published registers is imperfect and the counts are a floor; a page-level scan of the emigrant admission window (c.1620-41, ff.170-180) is still outstanding as belt-and-braces confirmation.
Why this conclusion
- Synthesized by Finding John's tailoring learned off the enrolled books (informal/country training)The informal/country-training reading synthesizes the Norwich freemen/apprentice-register negative.
Sources
- Millican, Percy, ed. The Register of the Freemen of Norwich, 1548-1713: A Transcript, with an Introduction, an Appendix to Those Freemen Whose Apprenticeship Indentures Are Enrolled in the City Records, and Indexes of Names and Places. Norwich: Jarrold & Sons, 1934., Register of the Freemen of Norwich 1548-1713; Gurney entries ff.57b (1560/61, non appr.), 59b-59c (cordwainer dead by 1580), 181a (James Gurny freed 8 Jan 1648); no John Gurney freedom c.1615-1660
- Rising, Winifred M., and Percy Millican. An Index of Indentures of Norwich Apprentices Enrolled with the Norwich Assembly, Henry VII-George II. Norfolk Record Society, vol. 29. Norwich: Norfolk Record Society, 1959., Index of Indentures of Norwich Apprentices, NRS 29; GURNEY, James, s. Francis of St Peter Permountergate, St Mich. 1627, 7 yrs, ref. E.17; no John Gurney apprentice enrolled
Topic file location: Origin — trade and training
Technical details
- Research item:
G13-RI-000073 - Graph revision:
244 - Machine-readable JSON:
/assets/g13-graph/findings/G13-RI-000073.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.