Edward and several other Gurgany's are believed to have been from Long Crendon, Buckinghamshire, England before coming to Virginia. See the maps below. Whether the Gurganus' descended from Edward or not, there is likely a connection somewhere. The maps on the right are from Free Historic Maps and GENUKI.
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| Buckinghamshire | Aylesbury | Long Crendon |
Links to Database Records:
Edward & Anne Gurgany
Thomas Harris, Audry Hoare, Joane Vincent
Gurgany's in Long Crendon
Below are two documents from J. Phillip Harris on recent research into the Gurgany - Harris connections:
(Note: bold and color high-lighting are mine, added 2/7/05 - RMG)
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Solving Capt. Thomas Harris - The Aylesbury Connection By J Phillip Harris March 24, 2002 Three recent discoveries about Capt. Thomas Harris have suggested a possible pattern that I felt needed to be investigated in more depth: 1. Parish records show that Edward Gurgaynie, whose property Capt. Thomas Harris inherited, was born in Long Crendon, Buckingham, seven miles from Aylesbury. 2. We now feel that the first wife of Capt. Thomas Harris was Audrey Hoare, who was christened at St. Mary, Aylesbury, Buckingham in 1604 and arrived on the Marmaduke in 1621. 3. The Muster of 1624 shows that John Woodlief was a kinsman of Capt. Thomas Harris. John Woodlief was born in Dinton, Buckingham, just two miles from Aylesbury. How important is this newfound Aylesbury connection? Playing a hunch, I decided to try an exercise to see if there were any other connections to Aylesbury. My hunch has paid off in a very big way, much more than I could have ever imagined. I examined the list for "Neck of Land" on the Muster of 1624, which, for most of the names, lists the ages, year of entry to Virginia, and the ship on which they came. "Neck of Land" is today known as Curles Neck. The names appear on the list in the same order they were located along the river beginning at Four Mile Creek and sweeping downstream almost to the Shirley Hundred settlement, a total distance along the great bend of the river of about five miles. Using the ages listed on the Muster in 1624, I searched the IGI for parish christening records that would match up. Following is the very surprising results. ALL of the towns listed in ALL CAPS are within 7 MILES OF AYLESBURY. (I have added Edward Gurgaynie in the proper location, although he had died by 1619 and was not on the original list.) THE LIST (in order): 1. Luke Boyse - 44 - 1619 - (appears to be from Eythorne, Kent). 2. Josuah Chard - 36 - 1607 - unidentified. 3. JOHN DODDS - 36 - 1607 - CHESHAM. 4. William Vincent - 39 - 1610 - unidentified. 5. Thomas Harris - 38 - 1610 - unidentified. 6. EDWARD GURGAYNIE - (would have been 42) - 1608 - LONG CRENDON. 7. JOHN PRICE - 40 - 1610 - STOKE HAMMOND. 8. Hugh Hilton - 36 - 1619 - unidentified. 9. RICHARD TAYLOR - 50 - 1608 - CHESHAM. 10. Thomas Oage - 40 - 1610 - unidentified. 11. ROBERT GREENLEAFE (Greene in 1623) - 43 - 1610 - ASTON ABBOTS. 12. Henry Coltman - 30 - 1610 - unidentified. 13. Hugh Price - 35 - 1618 - unidentified. 14. Thomas Farmer - 30 - 1616 - unidentified. 15. THOMAS SHEPPEY - 22 - 1620 - AYLESBURY. 16. Alexander Bradway - 31 - 1620 - unidentified. 17. WILLIAM SHARPE - 40 - 1610 - STONE. 18. RICHARD BIGGS - 41 - 1610 - STOKE HAMMOND. 19. WILLIAM BAYLEYS - 41 - 1610 - AYLESBURY. Of these 19 men who had settled at Curles Neck, ten can be readily identified. Nine of those came from the Aylesbury area. Only one (Luke Boyse) appears to have come from somewhere else. Of the nine, all but one (Thomas Sheppey) were older than age 30 and came to Virginia by 1610 or before. Of the nine who cannot be identified, five of them also fit the same criteria of being over age 30 and in Virginia by 1610, including William Vincent and our very own Thomas Harris. Also, nine of the 19 came in the year 1610 on the various ships that came over with Sir Thomas Dale to settle at Henricus, a few miles up river from Curles Neck, again including William Vincent and Thomas Harris. In fact, William Bayleys of Aylesbury came over on the Prosperous with Thomas Harris. Of the nine who came with Dale in 1610, five can be identified, and all five are from the Aylesbury area. Considering the results of the above findings, I decided to take it a step farther. I went back to the Muster of a year earlier in 1623, the famous one that lists those killed in the 1622 Indian massacre. I found Thomas Harwood of Ivinghoe, Buckingham living at Curles Neck in 1623 but apparently gone by 1624. I also found William Clements listed as killed in the massacre. He was from Hoggeston, Buckingham. Both towns are just outside of Aylesbury. Thomas Harwood would have been age 40 in 1624, and William Clements would have been age 48. Thomas Sheppey, the one Aylesbury name on the 1624 list who was under age 30 and came after 1610, led to another interesting connection. Thomas Sheppey came over in 1620 on the Supply. This was the ship, led by John Woodlief of Aylesbury, kinsman to Thomas Harris, that brought the group of colonists over to establish Berkeley Hundred, the same group credited with observing the first Thanksgiving. Checking that list, sure enough, I found at least five other names that appeared to be from the Aylesbury area, and, as if to emphasize the finding, they were all grouped together with Thomas Sheppey on the original list of names. What conclusions to draw from all of this? Well, it is certainly much more than a coincidence. Something was going on here. I would suspect that there was some group, organization, movement, or whatever operating in the Aylesbury area from which these men were recruited to come to Virginia. They came together and they settled here together. At this point, I would predict we would find, could we identify all of them, that the nine men who came with Sir Thomas Dale in 1610 all came from the Aylesbury area, and this, of course, would include Thomas Harris. Aylesbury is the central town in a very distinct valley in the Chiltern Hills to the northwest of London. The valley is formed by the River Thame, a branch of the Thames. All of the villages identified stretch along the banks of the river from Long Crendon to Stoke Hammond, a total distance of no more than 15 miles. Aylesbury is on the river about halfway between these two villages. Whatever group was operating in Aylesbury in 1610 was still there ten years later, as evidenced by John Woodlief, Thomas Sheppey, and the other Aylesbury natives in the Berkeley Hundred group. In 1624, after the failure of Berkeley Hundred, John Woodlief returned to England for a time, leaving his 7 year old daughter with his kinsman, Thomas Harris. Likewise, Thomas Sheppey chose not to go back like many of the Berkeley Hundred group, but instead went to settle among his fellow Aylesbury acquaintances at Curles Neck. This leads to another interesting prediction. Going back to the total list of the 19 men at Curles Neck, we find 13 wives with full information about when they arrived. Nine of them came in the years 1620 to 1623. Most of them were in their mid twenties in 1624 while the husbands were around 40. Do these not suggest the "young maidens" sent over here to marry the colonists. The only one we can identify is Audrey Hoare, the first wife of Thomas Harris, and, of course, she is from Aylesbury. If we can determine some maiden names among the rest, I would predict we would find that they too are from the Aylesbury area. Whatever caused the group in 1610 to come over with Dale, and then caused the similar group in 1620 to come over with Woodlief, was probably at work sending over Aylesbury brides for its men in Virginia. This also leads us closer to understanding the relationship with Sir Thomas Dale. Berkeley Hundred was sponsored by a group of investors, with the lead investor being Sir William Throckmorten, the brother of Lady Elizabeth Dale, wife of Sir Thomas Dale. We can now see that there was a connection between the two groups of colonists, with the Aylesbury linkage occurring both at Henricus and at Berkeley. Was the Throckmorten family or perhaps Lady Dale herself one of the central figures behind these early colonization attempts? So far, I have been unsuccessful in identifying Thomas Harris in Aylesbury, but I have only attempted it through the parish records on IGI. For almost 100 years, Harris researchers have looked for him among the Essex Harrises. No one has every been able to come up with anything that didn't turn out to be incorrect. Now, apparently, we know why. There are a substantial number of Harris families in Aylesbury and the surrounding Buckingham villages in that time period, probably even more than in Essex. There are plenty of other records available that need to be checked. I feel it is only a matter of time before we locate something more substantial. We know Thomas Harris inherited land from Anne Gurgaynie, the widow of his neighbor. After finally dismissing the idea of the fictitious daughter named Adria Gurgaynie, we could not explain why he received that inheritance. Perhaps now, there is a much better chance of discovering that Thomas Harris was directly related to Anne Gurgaynie (brother/sister perhaps). We also now have a better understanding of why Thomas Harris married the widow, Joane Vincent, as his second wife. Both William Vincent and Joane Vincent were likely to have been Aylesbury natives as well. There is plenty to do and plenty to check out. This only opens the door to some new research possibilities. Chuck Harris, Paul Tobler, Glenn Gohr, Elizabeth Russo, Fran Fletcher, Barbara Doying, Ken Schwarzburg, perhaps it is time to reactivate the "Crazy Wombats" group on Harris-Va. I hope to hear from you all and welcome anyone's input on this matter. Phil Harris Richmond, Virginia jpharris@juno.com |
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From: James P Harris Sent: Wednesday, March 27, 2002 Subject: Harris/Gurgaynie information There was no such person as Adria Gurgaynie - or Joane Gurgaynie either. The first wife of Thomas Harris was listed as "Adry" in a 1638 land patent. Since Thomas Harris inherited the Edward Gurgaynie property (adjacent to the Harris property}from widow Anne Gurgaynie when she died in 1619, some well intentioned Harris descendant speculated way back there that "Adry" must have been the Gurgaynie daughter. Somehow that idea stuck, got written into countless genealogies, sometimes by really prominent people who should have known better, but it was always fiction. There is not a shred of record evidence to indicate the existence of such a person. One thing that should have caused someone to question it was that Anne Gurgaynie died in 1619 and the person named "Adry" didn't get here until 1621. To make a long story short, it was determined that the only real person that actually came over on the Marmaduke in 1621 that could be "Adry" was Audrey Hoare. There are actual parish records from Aylesbury, Buckingham documenting her family. For a workup of everything that is known about her, go to Rootsweb Edward Gurgaynie was the one from Long Crendon (fact). He did not have to be old enough to be the father of Thomas Harris's wife since he really wasn't. He was basically only four years older than Thomas Harris and, if Thomas Harris was from Aylesbury as we now think, then most likely Anne Gurgaynie left Thomas Harris the property because she was directly related to him, such as being his sister or cousin. This is what we have to now prove. It's still just speculation until we prove it by finding a real record somewhere. There was no Edward Gurgaynie in Creeksea, Essex (fiction). Again, there are countless submissions on FamilySearch, Ancestry.Com, Rootsweb, FTM World Family Tree, the list goes on, that say he is from all sorts of places in Essex. They are not worth the time to even look at them. The only REAL records are the ones on FamilySearch under the International Genealogical Index page. And then, the only ones even there that are any good are the Extracted Parish Records. These are the batch records that are prefixed with a letter such as "C" for christenings and "M" for marriages. If it doesn't have a prefixed letter, then it's just a submission - probably by someone who has no idea what they are doing. I caution you, if you are going to use the IGI, rely ONLY on the Extracted Parish Records. Consider everything else to be crap. As far as Thomas Harris being a son of Sir William Harris of Creeksea, that was actually disproved as long ago as 1910 but again, people just keep copying the same old misinformation. You will still find it written that way in a thousand different places. Until the recent turn towards Aylesbury, Buckingham, everyone was still trying to find Thomas Harris among the Essex Harrises, but obviously you can't find someone who isn't there. Now that we finally have people starting to look in someplace different, and one that shows promise based on facts and not fiction, I think we will soon have some success. The reference to Thomas Osborne was made years ago by a Ligon researcher doing the Thomas Harris thing. It quickly caught on. She quickly retracted it, saying she just made up something to fill the need. Too late. The retraction didn't catch on. The second wife of Thomas Harris was Joane Vincent, the widow of his adjacent neighbor William Vincent. I can send you the "proof" set but I doubt if it's something you are interested in. They too were probably from Aylesbury. If you ever heard the witchcraft story concerning Thomas Harris, forget that too. It was about someone down in the Kecoughtan settlement and was conveniently borrowed to apply to Thomas Harris. As for there being a son named Edward Gurgaynie, the only thing I know you could base this on is the patent in 1645 (not 1648) that refers to the land of Edward "Gurgunye". Since a number of the other names referred to in that patent are already dead, I always felt they were referring to the parcel willed to Thomas Harris. It was common to refer to a piece of land by its original owner's name long after he was dead, particularly if it was currently held by someone who had many different parcels like Thomas Harris did in 1645. It was the only way they could continue to identify a specific parcel. My take has always been that Edward and Anne Gurgaynie had no children, which is why they willed the land to Thomas Harris. The only fact based Gurgaynie family that I know of is the one in Long Crendon. Given all the Aylesbury, Buckingham connections, I feel pretty certain it's the same family in Henrico in the years 1608 to 1619. A few of the big articles I have put out are located on Rich Boyd's Harris Hunters website. There are two up top, including the new one I sent you, and a big one on William Harris of Jamestown about half way down. The new one on Capt. Thomas Harris really makes the old one obsolete. |
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