Gurney Genealogy Library Updated 15 July 2026 by Allen Gurney

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

Colonial frontier rights

In his last years — 1659 to 1663 — John Gurney repeatedly took up proprietary rights in newly-forming inland plantations: a house-lot and proprietor’s share at Billerica, an allotment at Mendon, and an unlocated Quinapaug frontier interest carried into his estate. He relocated to none of them. Each was a proprietary right — a lot granted on condition, a rate-paying share, an allotment, an unappraised interest — in a town where he never settled; his home stayed in the established Weymouth-then-Braintree corridor. His earlier and residential landholding — the Weymouth town grants, and the Braintree leasehold and Monatiquot freehold where he actually lived — is treated in the Weymouth-community and Braintree-community units; this unit covers only the frontier proprietary rights of his last years.

A Billerica proprietor’s place, taken up and given back

John was admitted a proprietor of the new town of Billerica in 1659 — a standing that carried more than one land interest — but he surrendered his house-lot within four months and never removed there. His personal grant was a ten-acre house-lot, made 15 August 1659 on the express condition that he “come and inhabit the said Lott himselfe,” with his son Richard — Richard G12, of settling age in 1659 — accepted at John’s request as a fellow inhabitant; the manuscript town book records the grant “upon condition” and, on 26 December 1659, its surrender: “Daniel Shead in answer for his father John Gurney; the said John Gurney surrendred up the Lott.”[1] Daniel Shed had married John’s daughter Mary in 1647, so the man who handed the lot back was John’s son-in-law answering for him — a Shed–Gurney tie no compiled genealogy states outright, but which the town clerk records plainly.[2] Distinct from that personal lot, John also took part as a rate-paying proprietor in the town’s communal land-buying: Hazen’s history records him assessed £2 5s 10d toward the half-payment for the Dudley Farm purchase on 10 September 1659, and the town book carries him in the proprietors’ lot-draw list (“John Gurney I”) with two great-meadow lots laid out to him (at James Paterson’s bounds and the mouth of Horse Brook).[3][1] In the November 1659 upland division of thirty-nine lots among forty persons he took no lot in person — “Peter Bracket and Joseph Tompson holding in common the right of John Gurney, of Braintree,” his share held by other men.[3] Every dated Billerica record is “John Gurney of Braintree”; half the surrendered house-lot was re-granted to John Hall on 19 March 1659/60, and while the meadow and upland allocations appear in the records independently of the surrendered house-lot, no Billerica parcel is shown passing to or occupied by a Gurney.[1][3] Evidence

An allotment at Mendon

John was also among the Braintree men who took up allotments at the inland Nipmug plantation that became Mendon. Adin Ballou’s history of Milford places John among the Braintree men accepted to allotments at the new Mendon plantation in 1662, the last full year of his life.[4] The record is a proprietary right, not proof of settlement: because Mendon was not incorporated until 15 May 1667 and John died in 1662/3, his name in the printed proprietors’ record stream is most plausibly an early grant carried forward into the later proprietor list, or a retrospective allottee entry, rather than evidence he ever removed there.[4][5] The post-incorporation Mendon proprietary stream — where “John Gurny” and “Grisel Gurney” appear as separate twenty-acre lot-holders, and Grisel’s Mendon accommodation ties into the Juell/Kibbee/Burge network — belongs with his widow and descendants and is treated there, not in this account of John’s own frontier rights.[5] Evidence

The Quinapaug interest in the 1663 estate

John’s 1663 probate inventory carried a frontier land interest the appraisers themselves could not value. Among his goods — appraised in all at £55 14s 6d, taken 16 March 1663 by Gregory Belcher, Edmund Quincy, and Thomas Faxon — the manuscript records “an estate layd out in land at Quinapaug wch we know not,” a line absent from the brief printed abstract.[6][7] Contemporary deeds locate that name: Suffolk Deeds Liber IV records that Joshua Foote bought 4,000 acres “att Quinapaug within ye Jurisdiction of Providence” from the Indians Sacont and George Sacount by deed of 18 June 1655; by 1660 the tract had passed to William Hudson, who sold it on to Boston men in 500-acre parcels. No Gurney appears among the recorded Quinapaug parcels.[8][9] The inventory line therefore reads best as an unrecorded right or share in this Providence-jurisdiction land speculation — exactly the kind of asset appraisers could describe but not price (“wch we know not”) — an unvalued frontier interest rather than any appraised Braintree real estate.[6][8] Evidence

Proprietary right, not residence

Across 1659–1663 the pattern is consistent: John Gurney took up proprietary rights at Billerica, Mendon, and Quinapaug and relocated to none of them. The Billerica house-lot was granted on condition of personal habitation and surrendered within months, its proprietor’s share and meadow lots left behind; the Mendon allotment was a proprietary place whose surviving record postdates his death; the Quinapaug interest was an unpriced share the appraisers could not locate. The same pattern reaches back to Weymouth — after he had moved to Braintree, a Second-Division great lot (no. 16) was granted to him there on 2 February 1651/2, proprietary land in a town he no longer lived in, set in its landholding context in the arrival-chronology unit.[10] What these share is that John took up proprietary right separately from residence. This is not an absence of settlement: John was himself a settler and landholder, whose home stayed in the established Weymouth-then-Braintree corridor — his own Monatiquot freehold with its house and orchard, which he sold in 1661/2, and the Tyng farm he held as a Braintree tenant, both treated in the Braintree-community unit. The distinction the frontier record draws is between holding a proprietary right in a new plantation and removing there to live — John did the first, repeatedly, and the second not at all.[1][4][6] Evidence

  1. Billerica, Massachusetts town records 1653–1727 (manuscript), FamilySearch image group DGS 007466228; film-scoped Gurn* sweep, 2026-06-12: grant “upon condition” and the 26 December 1659 surrender (“Daniel Shead in answer for his father John Gurney; the said John Gurney surrendred up the Lott”) at image 173 (ark:/61903/3:1:3QS7-89Z8-T2GH); re-grant of half to John Hall, 19 March 1659/60, at image 15 (ark:/61903/3:1:3QS7-89Z8-TV2C); great-meadow lots at images 179–180. Full extract at sources/corpus_supplement/billerica-town-records-gurney-1659-1660.md. Source ID: billerica-town-records-ms. ↩︎ ↩︎ ↩︎ ↩︎

  2. Frank E. Shedd, Hubert C. Shedd, and J. Gardner Bartlett, Daniel Shed Genealogy: Ancestry and Descendants of Daniel Shed of Braintree, Massachusetts, 1327–1920 (Boston: Shedd Family Association, 1920), resting on the primary town record behind it — Samuel A. Bates, ed., Records of the Town of Braintree, 1640 to 1793 (Randolph, Mass.: D. H. Huxford, 1886), which registers the seven Daniel-and-Mary Shed births between 1 October 1647 and 30 October 1658: Daniel Shed married Mary Gurney in 1647, making John Gurney his father-in-law — the relationship the Billerica clerk records as “his father John Gurney.” Source IDs: shedd-daniel-shed-genealogy-1920; braintree-records-1640-1793-1886. ↩︎

  3. Henry A. Hazen, History of Billerica, Massachusetts, with a Genealogical Register (Boston: A. Williams and Co., 1883), historical pp. 33–34 / image p. 54: the £2 5s 10d Dudley-Farm rate of 10 September 1659 and the November 1659 upland division, “Peter Bracket and Joseph Tompson holding in common the right of John Gurney, of Braintree.” Internet Archive historyofbilleri00hazen. Source ID: hazen-billerica-1883. ↩︎ ↩︎ ↩︎

  4. Adin Ballou, History of the Town of Milford, Worcester County, Massachusetts, from Its First Settlement to 1881 (Boston: Franklin Press, Rand, Avery, & Co., 1882), pp. 27–35 (the Braintree men accepted to allotments at the new Mendon plantation, 1662). Internet Archive historyoftownofm01ball. Source ID: ballou-history-of-milford-1882. ↩︎ ↩︎ ↩︎

  5. The Proprietors’ Records of the Town of Mendon, Massachusetts: Incorporated May 15, 1667 (Boston: Rockwell and Churchill Press, 1899), pp. 13, 43, 46, 152–153 and related title/boundary entries (John Gurny and Grisel Gurney as separate twenty-acre lot-holders; Grisel’s Mendon accommodation tied to Joseph Juell and the Juell/Kibbee/Burge network). Because Mendon was incorporated only 15 May 1667 and John died 1662/3, his appearance in the post-incorporation print stream postdates his death; the widow/descendants stream is developed in the family-Mendon-descendants topic. Internet Archive proprietorsrecor00mend. Source ID: mendon-proprietors-records-1899. ↩︎ ↩︎

  6. Suffolk County, Massachusetts, Probate Records, Case #338, John Gurney Senr probate inventory, Braintree, 16 March 1663; manuscript image, with the land-interest line “An estate layd out in land at Quinapaug wch we know not”; project extract and analysis at sources/corpus_supplement/john-gurney-probate-inventory-spr-case-338.md. Source ID: spr-case-338-john-gurney-probate-1663. ↩︎ ↩︎ ↩︎

  7. “Suffolk Wills,” New England Historical and Genealogical Register, vol. 12 (1858), p. 53 (John Gurney estate abstract, £55 14s 6d; the Quinapaug line is not carried in the printed abstract). Source ID: nehgr-12-suffolk-wills-1858. ↩︎

  8. Suffolk Deeds, Liber IV, pp. 270–271: William Hudson to John Button, 500 acres at Quinapaug, reciting Joshua Foote’s Indian purchase of 4,000 acres “att Quinapaug within ye Jurisdiction of Providence” by deed of 18 June 1655 and the 1660 conveyance to Hudson; read via FamilySearch full-text images, film 007442495, image 191 (ark:/61903/3:1:3QSQ-G9ZS-B2QC). No Gurney appears among the recorded Quinapaug deeds (pp. 268, 270–271 per the volume index). Source ID: familysearch-fulltext-search. ↩︎ ↩︎

  9. Thomas F. Temple, Register of Deeds, Suffolk Deeds. Liber IV (Boston: Rockwell and Churchill, 1888), pp. 268, 270–271 (printed edition of the Quinapaug conveyances). Source ID: suffolk-deeds-liber-iv-1888. ↩︎

  10. Gilbert Nash, Historical Sketch of the Town of Weymouth, Massachusetts, from 1622 to 1884 (Weymouth, 1885), Appendix C, p. 282 (great lot no. 16, Second Division, granted to John Gurney 2 February 1651/2 and, like his earlier parcels, subsequently granted to others). The Weymouth great lot is set in its arrival/landholding context in Colonial arrival chronology; it is noted here only as the earliest instance of John holding proprietary land in a town he no longer resided in. Internet Archive historicalsketch00nash_0. Source ID: nash-historical-sketch-weymouth-1885. ↩︎