Ancestors

Abigail Gurley

b. 1731 · Mansfield, Connecticut
Born 1731, Mansfield, Connecticut
Father: Samuel Gurley
Mother: Experience Rust
Children include Elias

Abigail Gurley was born at Mansfield, Connecticut, on 30 June 1731. She was the youngest of the four daughters the town clerk entered under her parents' names: "Children of Samuel and Experience Gurley. Experience, b. January --, 1724-5; Margaret, b. May 4, 1727; Mary, b. March 7, 1729; Abigail, b. June 30, 1731." Her parents had six older children born before they came to Mansfield.

Her father, Samuel Gurley, was a farmer who lived near the old Gurley burying ground and was a leading man of the town. He had been born in 1687, sixteen days after his own father drowned in the Connecticut River. His mother, Hester Ingersoll, was carried to Canada in a raid on Northampton in 1704 and died there a prisoner. Abigail's mother, Experience Rust, came from a Northampton family that had moved to North Coventry.

On 20 September 1750, at nineteen, she married Elisha Williams at Mansfield. The Gurley genealogy of 1897 records it: "ABIGAIL GURLEY, daughter of Samuel Gurley and Experience Rust of Mansfield, Conn., married Elisha Williams, Sept. 20, 1750." He was twenty two, a son of Capt. William Williams, who had bought land at Union in 1736.

They lived at Union, in the hills north of Mansfield, where Elisha was called Lieut. Williams after his service in the French and Indian War. The town history says he "married Abigail, and had 8 children." Six of them are named in the Union records: Samuel, Daniel, Elisha, Stephen, Abigail and Elias. Samuel was born in 1756 and Elias on 27 February 1769. On 23 May 1766 an Abigail Williams was admitted to the Union church, probably her.

Her father died in 1760 and her mother in 1768. In 1768 her husband went north with a few other men to choose land at Clarendon, in what is now Vermont, and in the spring of 1769 the families followed. Abigail went with a baby a few months old. Her death is not recorded in any source found.

Parents

Samuel Gurley 1687-1760

Experience Rust (1693-1768)

Children

Elias H. Williams 1770-1823

Sources

Harvey M. Lawson, History of Union, Conn. (1893), p. 496; archive.org historyofunionco01hamm; HathiTrust hvd.hxtdei, seq. 596
Susan W. Dimock, Births, Baptisms, Marriages and Deaths from the Records of the Town and Churches in Mansfield, Connecticut (1898), p. 416; archive.org birthsbaptismsma00dimo
Susan W. Dimock, Births, Baptisms, Marriages and Deaths from the Records of the Town and Churches in Mansfield, Connecticut (1898), p. 88; archive.org birthsbaptismsma00dimo
The History and Genealogy of the Gurley Family (1897), p. 45; archive.org historygenealogy00gurl
Susan Dimock, Births, Baptisms, Marriages and Deaths, Mansfield (1898), pp. 88, 416, archive.org birthsbaptismsma00dimo; The History and Genealogy of the Gurley Family (1897), p. 45, archive.org historygenealogy00gurl; Harvey M. Lawson, History of Union, Conn. (1893), pp. 98, 496; Barbour Collection index, Union, Ancestry collection 1034

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Cite: Heirology, "Abigail Gurley (b. 1731)", https://heirology.com/ancestors/abigail-gurley-1731-5cb7ee.