These research notes are provided as-is and contain supplementary working research.
Negative result
Negative: First Church Boston (CSM 39) records no Gurney, 1630-1778
The Records of the First Church in Boston (CSM Publications 39) - the town's only church of the 1630s-1640s, its admissions, votes, and baptisms running 1630-1778 - contain no Gurney of any spelling, though John Newgate, the feltmaker in whose Boston household the 1636 apprentice John Gurney lived as a servant, was himself a member. The last Boston-side record class thus closes against Anderson's 'Boston' settlement attribution for the elder John.
Search scope
- Searched: Colonial Society of Massachusetts (colonialsociety.org) — Records of the First Church in Boston, vol. I (CSM Publications 39): admissions, church votes, and baptisms
- Coverage window: 1630 to 1778
- Search: In-browser regex sweep of the full volume text for g[aeiouvy]rn (case-insensitive) and gourn.
- Results reviewed: 0
- Limitations: Companion volumes 40-41 (marriages and further records) were not separately swept.; Transcript-level read of Pierce's printed edition, not an image read of the church's manuscript record books.
Why this conclusion
- Supports Finding Boston silence: every surviving Boston-era record class holds no John GurneyThe First Church zero-Gurney result is the headline record-class negative behind the Boston-silence finding.
Sources
- Pierce, Richard D., ed. The Records of the First Church in Boston, 1630–1868. Publications of the Colonial Society of Massachusetts, vol. 39. Boston: Colonial Society of Massachusetts, 1961., Vol. I (CSM 39): admissions 1630-1778, church votes 1656-1785, baptisms 1630-1847; colonialsociety.org node/1070
Topic file location: Colonial record coverage
Technical details
- Research item:
G13-RI-000180 - Graph revision:
244 - Machine-readable JSON:
/assets/g13-graph/findings/G13-RI-000180.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.