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To Marry: or if at first you don't succeed....


Richard Axe

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There is an interesting entry in the marriage register for St Peter's, Sheffield, from 1794.

?29/4/1794 St Peter's, Sheffield: John Waterfall to Ann Linfitt by licence. The marriage entry shows that it was not completed. It states, "when the ceremony was nearly concluded & the register thus far filled up the father of the woman came in & forbid the marriage, she being under age."

It looks like they were determined to marry because John obtained another marriage licence from the Lichfield diocese and married Miss Hannah Linfit at Dronfield, Derbyshire, on 1st May. One Benjamin Banks[1], cutler, helped John with the licence bond, and he and William Parker acted as witnesses to the marriage itself.

There were two applications for a licence: one from York and one from Lichfield, and both have similar details. John is aged 21 and from Sheffield (York) with the added details that he was a cutler (Lichfield). Ann / Hannah is recorded as aged 21 and "of Sheffield" on the first and "of Dore" in Derbyshire (now part of Sheffield) on the second.

Other evidence suggests that this is likely to have been John's second marriage - but not his last!


[1] Presumably, the man listed in Leader’s History of the Cutlers’ Company (p118) as Benjamin Banks, son of Benjamin Banks, cutler deceased, and apprenticed to Joshua Cawton jun, cutler, for 7 years in 1787.

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