Background
George Bourne was born on June 13, 1780, in Westbury, England. George Bourne descended from an ancestral line embracing some of the names illustrious as martyrs and confessors in the first annals of the Reformation and the era succeeding, and to be early placed under decided religious influences, and among favorable religious associations.
His father, Samuel Bourne, was for thirty years a deacon of the Congregational Church at Westbury.
His mother was Mary Rogers, a lineal descendant of John Rogers, the Proto-martyr in the reign of persecuting Queen Mary, and who was the gifted translator and editor of the Bible which he published under the nom de plume of "Thomas Matthews", supplementing and completing the work of Tyndale and Coverdale.
His maternal grandmother was Mary Cotton, daughter of Rowland Cotton, physical doctor of Warminster and preacher at Horningsham, son of Seaborn Cotton and Prudence Wade, who was son of Rev John Cotton, the first Puritan minister of Boston. On his father’s side, he reckoned the martyr James Johnston, who suffered death at the Cross of Glasgow, in 1684, in defense of "Covenant and work of Reformation", at the time of the bloody Anglican persecution against the Presbyterians of Scotland.