Gurney Genealogy Library Updated 15 July 2026 by Allen Gurney

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

Nathan Gurney of Little Comfort / South Abington Notes

Research notes for fact-sheets/g09-nathan-gurney-related-fact-sheet.md. Nathan Gurney is a collateral figure tied to the direct line at G9: he and his wife Sarah Harden raised the direct-line ancestor Benjamin Gurney (G9), baptized at Abington 30 May 1730.

Who he was, and why he matters

Nathan Gurney lived at Little Comfort — the milling district of south Abington (within the old Bridgewater bounds, later South Abington, now Whitman). He was born at Weymouth on 15 October 1702, a son of Zachariah Gurney and Mary (Benson) Gurney, and therefore a grandson of Richard Gurney of Weymouth (G12). That makes Nathan a first cousin of Benjamin Gurney-4 (G10) — both were grandsons of Richard — and his household was where Benjamin (G10)'s out-of-wedlock son was raised. Nathan died at Abington 17 April 1786; Sarah died 1788. (On the older “son of John” reading, corrected by Rigler, see Parentage below.)[1][2]

Nathan married Sarah Harden (b. 9 Apr. 1707, Abington), a daughter of John Harden of Little Comfort, blacksmith, and Mary Littlefield, and a sister of Jane/Jean Harden, the mother of Benjamin G9. So when Benjamin was born in 1730, Nathan and Sarah were doubly his kin: Sarah was his maternal aunt; Nathan was his father’s first cousin. Rigler states the upbringing directly — Benjamin “was raised in Abington by Nathan-4 & Sarah (Harden) Gurney, his mother’s sister” — and Hobart independently documents the household that took him in.[2][3][4]

Parentage — son of Zachariah, not John

Rigler’s Nathan-4 entry corrects a long-standing error and states the case directly: Nathan was a son of Zachariah Gurney and Mary (Benson) Gurney, “Hobart’s ‘History of Abington’ indicates that he was the son of John, but that is incorrect. The error probably arose from confused wording on some transactions regarding the estate of John Gurney-3 of Little Comfort. However, Weymouth Vital Records, Cyrus Nash… & the Anna Gurney papers conclusively prove that Nathan was the son of Zachariah Gurney.”[1]

Both Zachariah and John-3 were sons of Richard Gurney (G12), so the correction does not change Nathan’s relationship to the direct line: he remains a grandson of Richard (G12) and a first cousin of Benjamin Gurney-4 (G10). What changes is the named father, and the narrative that “Nathan’s father founded the Little Comfort mill.” The mill was John Gurney-3’s, and John-3 was Nathan’s uncle. The same entry shows why the two were confused: on 14 February 1727 Nathan bought, for £25, a 1/6 share of John-3’s Little Comfort estate from his cousin David Gurney of Easton — John-3’s son. Hobart’s register, dividing John-3’s estate “among his children, among whom were Richard, David and Nathan,” folded the cousin-buyer into the children. Nathan himself was a housewright who, with his brother Joseph, bought Abington land in 1720, agreed in 1730 to build a sawmill (sold 1748), and in 1733 bought the ~107-acre Stowell tract near Plymouth Street (now Whitman) where he settled. “It was from Nathan and his brothers, Zachariah & Joseph, that the Gurneys of Old Abington and Bridgewater descend.”[1]

The household Benjamin grew up in

Hobart’s Abington Gurney register gives Nathan and Sarah’s children with birth months and years drawn from the town records:[2]

  • Martha, b. 24 July 1725 (m. Zachariah Shaw, 1745)
  • Rebecca, b. 4 October 1727 (m. Joseph Tirrell)
  • Lemuel, b. 11 July 1730 (m. Rebecca Derby)
  • Elijah, b. 15 May 1732 (m. 1. Mary Copeland, 2. Widow House)
  • Noah, b. 4 May 1735 (m. Ruth Pool)
  • Nathan, b. 22 November 1739 (m. Mary “Molly” Palmer)
  • Silas, b. 14 June 1743 (m. Ruth Palmer)
  • Sarah, b. 14 March 1745/6 (m. John Tirrell, Jr.)
  • Jacob, b. 13 March 1748 (m. Elizabeth Keene — Rigler corrects Hobart’s “Reese”)
  • John, b. 23 May 1751 (m. Sarah Norton)

Rigler (p. 182) supplies the eldest child Martha and the marriages; Hobart’s register, which begins at Rebecca, is the source of the older nine-child list. The two compiled accounts otherwise agree on the sequence.[1][2]

One of the children, Elijah (b. 15 May 1732), also surfaces in the Weymouth town birth register as “Elijah, s[on] of Nathan & Sarah,” same date — a town-record confirmation of a birth otherwise carried only from the compiled Abington accounts. The Weymouth (not Abington) registration is a minor unresolved wrinkle: either the family still entered some births in their ancestral town after Nathan’s 1725 Abington marriage, or Hobart’s “Abington” attribution for the earliest children is looser than the register implies. Not resolved here.[5]

Benjamin G9 (bpt. 30 May 1730) was almost exactly the age of Lemuel and slightly younger than Rebecca; he grew up among ten Gurney foster-siblings at Little Comfort. The eldest, Martha, born 24 July 1725 — just over two months after the 12 May 1725 marriage — both fixes the marriage date and explains the church’s fornication citation that Rigler records.[1]

Nathan died at Abington on 17 April 1786; Sarah died in 1788.[1]

The Little Comfort origin — John Gurney-3, Nathan’s uncle

Hobart: “John Gurney, the ancestor of most of the name in Abington, came from Weymouth, and settled in the south part of this town, then a part of Bridgewater, about the year 1690. He died about 1715; and, it seems, intestate… children, among whom were Richard, David and Nathan.”[2]

This John is the John Gurney-3 (son of Richard-2/G12) whom Rigler names as founder of the Little Comfort mill: same Weymouth origin, same south-Abington settlement, same intestacy. But Rigler’s Nathan-4 entry shows that the “Nathan” in Hobart’s list of John-3’s heirs was not John-3’s son — he was John-3’s nephew, buying into the estate. John-3 was a brother of Nathan’s father Zachariah and of the direct-line Benjamin Gurney-3 (G11), all three sons of Richard Gurney (G12). So the foster-household still ties back into the direct line, but through Zachariah, not John: Nathan was Benjamin G10’s first cousin, and John-3 the uncle whose mill and estate the family long associated — wrongly — with Nathan’s paternity.[2][1][6]

At least three Nathan Gurneys — disambiguation

The Abington/Whitman Gurneys produced several Nathans; conflating them is the obvious trap:

  1. The foster-father Nathan (this subject) — son of Zachariah, b. 1702, m. Sarah Harden 1725, children 1725–1751, d. 1786.
  2. Nathan, his son (b. November 1739) — “married a Palmer (sister of Silas’ wife); and had Nathan, Mary and Lebbeus.”[2]
  3. Nathan Gurney, Jr., Esq. (d. 11 Jan. 1851) — the foster-father’s great-grandson, the “Nathan, son of Nathan” of Hobart’s fourth generation. A schoolteacher, selectman from 1799 (twenty-four years), state representative, delegate to the 1820 Massachusetts constitutional convention, later a Boston alderman and Suffolk County senator. He married a daughter of Elijah Shaw, then Martha “Pullman/Pulling,” then Sarah Whitman; sons Nahum P. and Ephraim Whitman Gurney; daughters Dianthe and Marilla.[7]

The famous Whitman house “Gurney, Nathan and Martha Pullman House,” 496 Plymouth St (Massachusetts Historical Commission inventory WHI.307, c. 1816), belongs to #3, not to the foster-father.[8]

MACRIS / built-environment leads

The Massachusetts Cultural Resource Information System (MACRIS, mhc-macris.net) lists several Gurney properties that map onto this family’s footprint. Inventory forms (the “B-form” PDFs) often carry a builder genealogy worth pulling. (Availability: the MACRIS database and most inventory forms are available online.)

Collateral Abington/Whitman (Nathan’s descendants), highest relevance:

  • WHI.307 — Gurney, Nathan and Martha Pullman House, 496 Plymouth St, Whitman, c. 1816 → Nathan Gurney, Jr. (d. 1851).
  • WHI.325 — Gurney, Jeremiah and Mary Fullerton House, 213 Washington St, Whitman, c. 1795 → Jeremiah Gurney, son of Noah, grandson of the foster-father.
  • WHI.283 — Gurney, Jonathan Reed and Deborah C. Reed House, 364 Franklin St, Whitman, c. 1816 → a Jonathan R. Gurney of this stock.
  • Other Whitman Gurney entries (WHI.305 Daniel; WHI.314 Edwin; WHI.322 Hersey–Lydia Gurney; WHI.72 F. H. Gurney Building) are likely the same descent.

Direct-line leads (the Cummington migration of Benjamin G9), to pursue on the G8/G9 companions rather than here:

  • CUM.115 — Gurney, “Ase” House, 51 Main St, Cummington, 1816; CUM.151 — Gurney, Asa House, 75 Mount Rd, Cummington, 1808. Candidate seats of G9’s son Asa Gurney (b. 24 Oct. 1758, m. Molly Reed) or his descendants. PLF.14 (Plainfield) and ASF.241 (Ashfield) are neighboring-town Gurneys of the same Hampshire-County diaspora.

Two-Benjamin collateral (the Rochester half-brother line):

  • ROC.938 — East Rochester Cemetery, Gurney, Benjamin Stone, 1828 → a strong candidate for the gravestone of the Revolutionary-War Benjamin Gurney (d. 4 July 1828), the Sarah-Morse half-brother in the two-Benjamin problem.

Open questions

  1. Nathan’s vital dates — resolved from Rigler (Weymouth/Abington VR). Born 15 October 1702 Weymouth; married Sarah Harden 12 May 1725 Abington; died 17 April 1786 Abington (Sarah 1788). The underlying town-record images and any Plymouth probate would still be worth pulling for primary confirmation. (Unknown online.)
  2. Guardianship of Benjamin. No primary guardianship, church, or estate record yet places Benjamin in Nathan’s household; Hobart and Rigler are both compiled. A loose Plymouth County file or Abington church record would upgrade the fostering from compiled statement to documented fact. (Unknown online.)
  3. John Gurney-3’s estate. Hobart says he died “about 1715… intestate.” A Plymouth County administration or division record would confirm the Little Comfort succession and the children Richard/David/Nathan. (Unknown online.)

Sources consulted

  • Benjamin Hobart, History of the Town of Abington (1866), Appendix Gurney register pp. 383–386 and main-text Nathan Gurney, Jr. biography.[2][7]
  • Jean Gurney Rigler, The Gurney Family from Aaron to Zuinglius (rev. ed., 1994).[3][6]
  • John Harden’s 1751 Plymouth County will.[4]
  • The Neverending Hobby — John Gurney, US 1636.[9]
  • Massachusetts Cultural Resource Information System (MACRIS).[8]

  1. Rigler, Gurney Family from Aaron to Zuinglius (1994), entry NATHAN GURNEY-4 (Zachariah-3, Richard-2), p. 182 — Nathan’s parentage (son of Zachariah & Mary Benson, correcting Hobart’s “son of John”), birth 15 Oct. 1702 Weymouth, marriage 12 May 1725 and the fornication citation, the 1727 purchase of a 1/6 share of John-3’s estate from cousin David Gurney of Easton, the 1733 Stowell-farm purchase, occupation (housewright), death 17 Apr. 1786 (Sarah 1788), and the full ten-child set. Transcribed at sources/corpus_supplement/rigler-gurney-aaron-zuinglius-g9-g12-extract.md. Source ID: rigler-gurney-family-aaron-zuinglius-1994. ↩︎ ↩︎ ↩︎ ↩︎ ↩︎ ↩︎ ↩︎

  2. Benjamin Hobart, History of the Town of Abington, Plymouth County, Massachusetts, from its First Settlement (Boston: T. H. Carter and Son, 1866), Appendix, “Gurney” family register, pp. 383–386; verbatim extract at sources/corpus_supplement/hobart-1866-abington-gurney-register-extract.md; Internet Archive item historyoftownofa00hoba. Source ID: hobart-benjamin-history-abington-1866. ↩︎ ↩︎ ↩︎ ↩︎ ↩︎ ↩︎ ↩︎ ↩︎

  3. Jean Gurney Rigler, The Gurney Family from Aaron to Zuinglius: Some Descendants of Richard Gurney Who Settled at Weymouth, MA before 1656, rev. and expanded ed. (Honolulu: J. G. Rigler, 1994), entry BENJAMIN GURNEY-5, pp. 21–22 (“raised in Abington by Nathan-4 & Sarah (Harden) Gurney, his mother’s sister”). Source ID: rigler-gurney-family-aaron-zuinglius-1994. ↩︎ ↩︎

  4. Massachusetts. Probate Court (Plymouth County), record-book will of John Harden of Bridgewater, blacksmith, dated 17 September 1751, proved 7 October 1751, manuscript pp. 383–384; names daughter Sarah Gurney and daughter Jane Spear and grandson Benjamin Gurney. Source ID: plymouth-probate-john-harden-1751-will. ↩︎ ↩︎

  5. “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. ↩︎

  6. Rigler, Gurney Family from Aaron to Zuinglius (1994), entries BENJAMIN GURNEY-3 and BENJAMIN GURNEY-4, pp. 19–21, identifying John Gurney-3 (Richard-2) as founder of the Little Comfort mill and the Weymouth-to-Abington Gurney settlement. Source ID: rigler-gurney-family-aaron-zuinglius-1994. ↩︎ ↩︎

  7. Hobart, History of the Town of Abington (1866), main-text biography of Nathan Gurney, Jr. (selectman from 1799, state representative, 1820 constitutional-convention delegate, Boston alderman and Suffolk senator, d. 11 Jan. 1851), with the fourth-generation register entry “Nathan, son of Nathan” (pp. 385–386). Source ID: hobart-benjamin-history-abington-1866. ↩︎ ↩︎

  8. Massachusetts Cultural Resource Information System (MACRIS), Massachusetts Historical Commission, mhc-macris.net, inventory entries WHI.307, WHI.325, WHI.283, CUM.115, CUM.151, ROC.938 (Gurney properties). Source ID: macris-mhc. ↩︎ ↩︎

  9. “John Gurney, US 1636,” The Neverending Hobby, public compiled genealogy, giving Nathan Gurney’s marriage to Sarah Harden on 12 May 1725. Use as secondary compiled genealogy. Source ID: neverending-hobby-john-gurney-us-1636. ↩︎