Billerica, Massachusetts, USA
Place research page generated from the structured place spine and the companion place markdown.
Town and Dudley Farm purchase context where John Gurney appears in Hazen's printed 1659 rate list for the half payment of the purchase.
Linked ancestors
- G13 John Gurney Probable landholding / property reference
John Gurney’s whole Billerica footprint falls in about seven months of 1659–60, always as “John Gurney of Braintree.” He took up a proprietor’s place in the new town’s first land divisions, surrendered the house-lot within four months, and never moved there; nothing became a lasting Gurney holding.
John Gurney at Billerica, 1659–1660
The manuscript town book and Hazen’s printed history together give the full picture: a ten-acre house-lot granted 15 August 1659 on condition John settle it himself, with his son Richard accepted as a fellow inhabitant; a £3 house valuation, town charges of 10s 7d, and the £2 5s 10d Dudley-Farm rate of 10 September 1659; an absentee share in the November 1659 upland division, where Peter Brackett and Joseph Thompson held “the right of John Gurney, of Braintree”; two great-meadow lots (at James Paterson’s bounds and the mouth of Horse Brook); and the surrender on 26 December 1659, when Daniel Shed — John’s son-in-law — answered “for his father John Gurney,” after which half the lot was re-granted to John Hall. Full treatment and citations on the John Gurney (G13) companion; manuscript extract at billerica-town-records-gurney-1659-1660.md.