These research notes are provided as-is and contain supplementary working research.
Analysis
The elimination scaffold: structural grounds, not a blanket same-surname suspicion
Against the matching-criteria profile, a household is eliminated on structural rather than circumstantial grounds: continuing documented English residence past June 1641; a wife whose name is not Mary; a child set that does not match or that collides in date; or a documented trade, death, or generation placing the household in the wrong period. A household attested by only a single indexed event with no continuing record is held at a low residual (1–3%) rather than eliminated outright, since one record cannot itself rule out an unrecorded emigration. This is the same family-status-and-chronology standard already applied once inside this graph, where it separates the Braintree emigrant from the 1636 Newgate apprentice.
Why this conclusion
- Synthesizes Analysis The 1636 Newgate 'John Gurney' apprentice is not the Braintree emigrantThe Newgate apprentice de-conflation is an in-graph precedent applying the same family-status-and-chronology elimination standard.
- Synthesizes Analysis The 1615/Southwark tradition belongs to Newgate's apprentice, not the emigrantThe traditions-unit reconciliation of the Newgate apprentice is a second in-graph instance of the same elimination standard.
- Synthesized by Finding Candidate A eliminated: continuous Buckinghamshire/Northamptonshire residence, 1603-1653Applies the shared elimination scaffold (continuing documented English residence) to Candidate A specifically.
- Synthesized by Analysis Ackworth held at a residual ~3%: the only wife-name match, capped by naming and corridor mismatchesAn instance of the elimination scaffold's residual (not fully eliminated) branch: a single-attestation household held at low probability rather than cleared outright.
- Synthesized by Finding Earsham testator and his minor son are both the wrong generation to be the emigrantAn instance of the family-status-and-chronology elimination ground: the right surname, the wrong generation.
- Synthesized by Finding Other named households and the wider sweep hold ~8% combined residual; Candidate B remains the sole survivorApplies the shared elimination scaffold's residual-vs-eliminated distinction across this whole group of households.
- Synthesized by Finding Candidate D eliminated: 1662 London residence incompatible with the colonial John's 1662/3 deathCross-unit: Candidate D's elimination applies the shared matching-criteria/elimination scaffold (continuing English residence across the emigrant's colonial years).
- Synthesized by Finding Candidate C (Berkhamsted) eliminated on age, child set, and child chronologyCandidate C is cleared by the same shared elimination scaffold - wrong generation, mismatched child set, colliding chronology - that the overview unit states.
- Depends on Analysis Shared matching-criteria profile: tailor, wife Mary, five named children, birth c.1602–1610, gone from England by 1641The elimination scaffold has no content unless there is a profile to test candidates against.
- Synthesized by Finding Candidate landscape: 45 eliminated, 5 unlikely, Candidate B the sole survivor; probability model external-canonicalThe candidate-landscape outcome is the result of applying the elimination scaffold.
Appears in
- John Gurney identity case file — Describes the structural elimination methodology (continuing residence, wife-name mismatch, child-set mismatch, chronology/generation conflict, single-attestation residual) applied across Candidates A, C, D and the same-name clearance sweep.
Topic file location: Identity — candidate overview
Technical details
- Research item:
G13-RI-000105 - Graph revision:
244 - Machine-readable JSON:
/assets/g13-graph/findings/G13-RI-000105.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.