Does anyone have access to the original registers for Shinfield in Berkshire or the Sarum Marriage Licences and Bonds? I am not in England, so cannot visit any repository myself.
I am looking for the Licence/Bond and Marriage Register entry for Thomas CRUTCHFIELD and Ruth WATTS on 30 Aug 1789 at Shinfield. The Licence/Bond was dated 29 Aug 1789.
The transcriptions available on FindMyPast have conflicting interpretations of the groom’s name and occupation.
The Licence/Bond transcription has the groom’s middle name as Clarke with no occupation recorded. There are two transcriptions of the marriage register – one has the groom’s name as Thomas Clark Crutchfield, the other has his name as Thomas Crutchfield, occupation clerk.
If the original documents are available, I would like a verbatim transcription including any punctuation.
According to a marriage notice in the Reading Mercury, Thomas Crutchfield was a mealman, and according to the will of the father of Ruth Watts he was a miller. This would seem to support Clark(e)/Clerk being his middle name, but his first two children were baptised at the Independent Chapel in Arborfield, so it is possible he may also have been a non-conformist minister. It is also very unusual for someone born in the 1760s to have a middle name, and in this case the middle name does not occur on any other record for him (possible baptism, possible death, baptisms of 7 children, will of father-in-law, will and probate of potential father).
Thanks in anticipation.
