Finding

Candidate C is two men: C(i) eliminated on age, C(ii) held at a low probability

Candidate C is two men, and only the elder is eliminated. Searched by parent rather than by child, the Great Berkhamsted baptisms to a father John Gurney run from 1597 to 1637 — forty years, which is not one man. The natural break is the nine-year gap between Sara 1615 and Jhon 1624, and a Jhon Gourney was buried in the parish in 1620, between the two. C(i), fathering from 1597, was born about 1570-75, twenty-five to thirty years before the colonial John, and is eliminated on age — a ground immune to the same-name problem. C(ii), fathering from 1624, was born about 1598-1602, so about 51 in 1653, the best documented age fit in the whole field; he carries three colonial forenames, which no other English household reaches. What holds him at a low probability is that his household stopped because his children were dying rather than because he left: of the parish's sixteen Gurney-variant burials between 1579 and 1643, five fall between November 1637 and March 1638/9, and two of them match to the day the recorded death dates of two of his own children. Three further constraints run against him — no Mary Gurney is baptised in the parish at any date between 1544 and 1888; no John Gurney marriage occurs anywhere in Hertfordshire between 1600 and 1654, so his wife cannot be named or tested against a Mary; and a Richard Gurney buried on 28 June 1638 would collapse the candidate outright if he is C(ii)'s son of 1626, though the parish held four contemporaneous Gurney households and the index cannot tell them apart.

Confidence: High

Topic file location: Identity — Berkhamsted: Candidates C(i) and C(ii)