Gurney Genealogy Library Updated 15 July 2026 by Allen Gurney

These research notes are provided as-is and contain supplementary working research.

Benjamin Gurney (G11) Notes

Research notes for g11-benjamin-gurney-fact-sheet.md. See .claude/rules/research-files.md for the paired-file rule.

Working Notes

Will of 1738/9 — examined (Plymouth Probate vol. 8, pp. 98–99)

The will image is now in hand and transcribed verbatim.[1] Benjamin Gurney Sen.r of Middleborough, “Very Sick and Weak in Body but of Perfect Mind and Memory,” made it 4 May 1738; it was proved 2 July 1739, so he died between those dates. He signed by mark. The bequests:

  • to wife Rebekah — his half of the homestead held in partnership with son Benjamin, plus the dwelling house and barn, at her disposing; and all moveable estate after debts and funeral charges;
  • to son Benjamin (G10) — the parcel of land bought of Joseph Richards, in fee;
  • to daughter Rebeckah Taylor, wife of Daniel Taylor — £40, payable from the estate at her mother’s decease;
  • to son-in-law Daniel Taylor — 20 shillings.

Wife Rebekah and son Benjamin were named executors. Witnesses: James Whaley, Gershom Sa[m]son, Nehemiah Bennett; proved before John Cushing, Judge of Probate.

The will names only son Benjamin and daughter Rebecca (Taylor) — it reveals no further surviving children, settling the long-standing “the will should reveal them” question in the negative. It also confirms the Joseph Richards land was bought, not bequeathed to G11.

The 1701 First Church Braintree marriage

First Church Braintree (later First Church of Quincy) is a well-documented Massachusetts Bay congregation with surviving registers. The 30 December 1701 entry should be locatable. Confirming the entry directly would also clarify Rebecca Staples’s parentage — likely a kinswoman of the Samuel Staples of Scituate from whom Benjamin later bought the Williams farm in 1726.

“Granny Gurney’s Swamp”

This is the most evocative single fact from G11’s life and the most likely to find an external corroboration. The reference in data/ancestors v26.json notes the story is “confirmed independently”; the actual sources need pinning down. Likely candidates:

  • Hobart, History of Abington (1866) — standard Abington town history.
  • Mitchell, History of Bridgewater (1840) and The Genealogy of the Bridgewater Settlement by Nahum Mitchell.
  • Local-place-name compendia for Plymouth County.

If the story is preserved in print, a direct citation of the page reference would substantially strengthen the entry.

Three documented land transactions

  1. Williams farm purchase, 8 September 1726, from Samuel Staples of Scituate — Plymouth Deeds 25:79. Land on the Abington–Bridgewater line.
  2. Williams farm sale, 20 October 1730, to Abraham Pierce — Plymouth Registry 31:69, 70. Coincides with the move to Middleboro.
  3. Tinkham land joint purchase, 28 October 1730, with son Benjamin (G10) — Plymouth Registry 39:79.

The 1726 purchase from a Staples and the 1701 marriage to a Staples almost certainly tie together genealogically: this is likely a kinship-network land transfer rather than an arms-length sale.

The Joseph Richards bequest

data/ancestors v26.json mentions “Land from Joseph Richards (bequeathed in his will to son Benjamin).” Whose son? Joseph Richards’s son? Or G11 himself referred to as “son Benjamin” in Joseph Richards’s will because Joseph Richards was kin? This needs clarification by direct examination of the Richards will.

Negative results

  • Specific death date within 1738/9 not yet captured (will proved 1739 is the firm bracket).
  • Children other than Benjamin (G10) not yet identified — though the will (Plymouth Probate 8:98) would be the source for any such names.
  • Rebecca Staples’s death date and burial location not yet captured.

Open Questions

  1. Plymouth Probate 8:98 — resolved. The will (1738, proved 1739) has been examined and transcribed verbatim; see the will section above. (Available online — Ancestry.)
  2. Other children — resolved (none). The will names only son Benjamin (G10) and daughter Rebecca Taylor; no further surviving children are revealed. An estate inventory or administration account, if filed separately, was not sought. (Unknown online.)
  3. First Church Braintree register entry, 30 December 1701 — direct examination. (Unknown online.)
  4. “Granny Gurney’s Swamp” — resolved (named source). Cyrus Nash, quoted by Rigler (“D 1:13”). The underlying Nash text (a Weymouth/Abington local history) would be worth a direct pull, but the story now has a printed attribution. (Unknown online.)
  5. The Joseph Richards land — resolved. Not a bequest to G11. The will shows the parcel was “bought of Joseph Richards” and passed by G11 to his son Benjamin. Joseph Richards was the seller.
  6. Rebecca Staples’s family — resolved. Daughter of John-2 and Sarah (Atkins) Staples, b. 1682; Samuel Staples of Scituate, the 1726 grantor, was her brother. The 1726 purchase was a within-family transfer. (NEHGR 59:155, 116:20, 121:244.)

Rigler (1994) findings — direct page audit

Rigler’s Benjamin-3 (Richard-2) entry, transcribed at sources/corpus_supplement/rigler-gurney-aaron-zuinglius-g9-g12-extract.md, supplies parentage, a named source for the swamp story, and the will text.

Rebecca Staples’s parentage. Born 1682, daughter of John-2 and Sarah (Atkins) Staples (NEHGR 59:155, 116:20, 121:244). This confirms the kinship reading: the Samuel Staples of Scituate who sold Benjamin the Williams farm in 1726 was “also son of John & Sarah (Atkins)” — Rebecca’s brother — making the 1726 purchase a within-family transfer rather than an arm’s-length sale.[2]

Marriage officiant and the early moves. Married 30 Dec. 1701 by Mr. Moses Fisk at the First Church, Braintree. Benjamin moved from Weymouth to South Abington as early as 1707, probably living with his cousin Samuel Gurney-3 — who had married Rebecca’s widowed mother, Sarah (Atkins) Staples; he was listed on Axtell’s hide accounts in Feb. 1709 and 1710, returned to Weymouth in 1710, then went back to Abington.[2]

The Joseph Richards land — bought, not bequeathed. The will clause “to son Benjamin all of that parcel of land bought of Joseph Richards” shows the land was purchased from Joseph Richards and willed by G11 to his son Benjamin (G10). The earlier reading of a Joseph Richards bequest to G11 is corrected — Richards was a grantor, not a benefactor.[2]

Will text (Plym. Probate 8:98). Dated 4 May 1738, proved 1739: wife Rebeckah the use of the homestead held in partnership with son Benjamin; son Benjamin the Joseph Richards parcel; daughter Rebecca Taylor (wife of Daniel Taylor) £40 at her mother’s decease; son-in-law Daniel Taylor 20 shillings; moveables to the wife.[2]

“Granny Gurney’s Swamp” — the named source. Cyrus Nash (cited by Rigler as “D 1:13”) is the printed source long sought for this story: Rebecca went looking for Benjamin, found him “lying asleep in a field,” and “took the pipe out of her mouth & set fire to the grass around him to give him a good scare,” starting “one of the biggest fires of the time, burning over many acres of low ground, which thereafter was known as Granny Gurney’s Swamp.” Full quote in the corpus extract.[2]

A daughter, Rebecca. Rebecca Gurney, b. 22 Nov. 1702, m. 24 Aug. 1731 (by Joshua Cushing, J.P.) Daniel Taylor of Kingston (Kingston VR) — not previously recorded in this companion; the only sibling of G10 that Rigler carries.[2] The Weymouth town birth register independently confirms the birth at town-record level: “Rebecca, d[aughter] of Benjamin & Rebecca,” 22 Nov. 1702 — placing G11 and Rebecca (Staples) at Weymouth in 1702, well before the move to Abington (c. 1707) and Middleborough (c. 1730). It is the only child of theirs in the Weymouth register (son Benjamin G10 is absent there).[3]

Rigler worksheet (c. 1980) — a death-date not carried into 1994

The earlier Rigler family-group worksheet for Benjamin-3 records Rebecca (Staples) Gurney “died before 18 Sept. 1745” — a death bracket the 1994 edition does not give. Because the published edition could have included it and did not, treat the 1745 bound as provisional, pending the underlying record (likely a 1745 deed or probate), rather than as established fact. The worksheet otherwise agrees with the 1994 entry (marriage 30 Dec. 1701 by Moses Fisk; to Abington c. 1707, Middleboro c. 1730/31; will dated 4 May 1738).[4]

Sources Consulted

Sources to obtain

  • Plymouth County Deeds 25:79 (1726 Williams farm purchase) — direct examination.
  • Plymouth Registry 31:69, 70 (1730 sale to Pierce) — direct examination.
  • First Church of Braintree (now First Church of Quincy) — marriage register entry, 30 December 1701.
  • Hobart, History of Abington (1866).
  • Mitchell, History of Bridgewater (1840).

Notes for Future Drafting

  • The “Granny Gurney’s Swamp” story is the only piece of folk-history attached to any direct-line ancestor in the colonial Plymouth County generations and is genuinely worth preserving and expanding once a printed source is located.
  • The 1726 purchase and 1730 sale frame the Abington-line phase neatly; the 1730 Tinkham purchase with G10 is a small but real piece of evidence of household continuity into the next generation.

  1. Will of Benjamin Gurney Sen.r of Middleborough, Plymouth County Probate vol. 8, pp. 98–99; made 4 May 1738, proved 2 July 1739. Image (Ancestry, “Massachusetts, U.S., Wills and Probate Records, 1635–1991,” collection 9069, record 716357) held local-only at sources/media/ma-wills-probate-records/_local/; verbatim transcription at sources/corpus_supplement/plymouth-probate-benjamin-gurney-g11-will-1738.md. Source ID: ma-wills-probate-records. ↩︎

  2. Jean Gurney Rigler, The Gurney Family from Aaron to Zuinglius: A Genealogical Dictionary, rev. ed. (Honolulu: J. G. Rigler, 1994), Benjamin-3 (Richard-2) entry (p. 19), quoting Cyrus Nash for the Granny Gurney’s Swamp story and the will of 4 May 1738 (Plymouth Probate 8:98). Transcribed at sources/corpus_supplement/rigler-gurney-aaron-zuinglius-g9-g12-extract.md. Source ID: rigler-gurney-family-aaron-zuinglius-1994. ↩︎ ↩︎ ↩︎ ↩︎ ↩︎ ↩︎

  3. “Classified Record of Weymouth Births [to 1843–4],” p. 75 (Gurney section), manuscript copied 1879 by Gilbert Nash, purchased by the Town of Weymouth March 1890; Ancestry, “Massachusetts, U.S., Town and Vital Records, 1620–1988” (Holbrook), collection 2495, record 14720071. Full Gurney-section transcription on the G12 Richard companion; page image local-only at sources/media/weymouth-classified-record-births-nash/_local/. Source ID: weymouth-classified-record-births-nash. ↩︎

  4. Robert G. Rigler, M.D., Gurney family-group worksheet for Benjamin³ Gurney, c. 1980 (Honolulu). Image local-only at sources/media/rigler-genealogy-notes-c1980/_local/; transcription at sources/corpus_supplement/rigler-genealogy-notes-c1980-worksheets-extract.md. Source ID: rigler-genealogy-notes-c1980. Worksheet-only details absent from the 1994 edition are carried at lower weight per .claude/rules/citations.md. ↩︎