Braintree, Massachusetts, USA
Place research page generated from the structured place spine and the companion place markdown.
Massachusetts town where immigrant John Gurney held land and where Braintree church context intersects the Harden/Gurney cluster: Benjamin Gurney G11 married Rebecca Staples at Braintree First Church, and Mr. Niles of Braintree recorded Jane Harden of Little Comfort in 1711.
Linked ancestors
- G9 Benjamin Gurney maternal family context
- G11 Benjamin Gurney church/vital-record context
- G13 John Gurney Probable landholding / property reference
- G13 John Gurney Probable individual geography
John Gurney’s two Braintree properties
John Gurney held two separate properties in old Braintree, in different precincts.
The Tyng leasehold (north precinct, now central Quincy) — full place record at gurney-tyng-farm-quincy-ma.md. In 1647 William Tyng leased John Gurney a 45-acre farm for ten years; Gurney kept leasing it from Tyng’s daughters Bethia and Mercy until 1662, and the northern part of this “Gurney farm” later became the Adams Old House estate (“Peace field”), now in the center of Quincy. This is the holding in William Tyng’s 1653 probate inventory recorded as land “in the possession of John Gurney” — read as 45 acres by the National Park Service / Ezekiel Sargent and as 48 acres in the NEHGR abstract (a transcription discrepancy to settle against the inventory image). It is one continuous tenancy ~1647–1662 (the original 1647 ten-year term from William Tyng, then renewed from his daughters), the same property documented in both the 1653 inventory and the 28 March 1661 estate-division indenture. Approximate location: the Adams Old House, ~42.2565, -71.0028.[1][2]
The Monatiquot freehold (middle precinct, now Braintree center) — full place record at gurney-monatiquot-freehold-braintree-ma.md. A house, orchard, a five-acre parcel on the Monatiquot River, and an adjoining half-acre, which Gurney owned outright and sold to Richard Thayer in 1661/2. Approximate location on the Monatiquot, ~42.210, -70.992.[3]
National Park Service, Cultural Landscape Report, Adams National Historic Site (1997), pp. 12–13 (Site Chronology) and Figure 1, “William Tyng’s 45-acre farm, Braintree, Massachusetts, 1649,” citing the Ezekiel Sargent manuscripts (Quincy Historical Society, “Land Formerly of William Tyng”); npshistory.com/publications/adam/clr-1997.pdf. Source ID:
nps-adams-nhp. ↩︎Capt. William Tyng inventory abstract, New England Historical and Genealogical Register, vol. 30 (1876), p. 432. Source ID:
nehgr-30-432. ↩︎Suffolk Deeds, Liber V, pp. 457–459 (John Gurney of Braintree, tailor, to Richard Thayer, 12 February 1661/2); Samuel A. Bates, The Ancient Iron Works at Braintree, Mass. (1898), p. 10. Source IDs:
bates-ancient-iron-works-braintree-1898;familysearch-fulltext-search. ↩︎