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A tale of three weddings, pt 1 – The first marriage.

                                                      map of central Derbyshire


This is a story of a marriage that broke down, and of two subsequent bigamous marriages. 

When collating Holyland birth registrations, I spotted that of Sarah Hannah Holyland in Ashbourne, Derbyshire, in 1864. The Heage parish register showed that Sarah was baptised there on June 3 1864; her parents were William Holyland, a labourer, and Hannah, from Pentrich, and Sarah had been born on March 29 of that year. Sadly, little Sarah was buried 6 days later at the age of 9 weeks at Heage, although unlike her birth, the death was registered in the Belper district. 

There were no other Holyland births or deaths in the area around that time, although there was one marriage – that of William Holyland and Hannah Slater in Ashbourne in the first quarter of 1864. Thanks to the GRO website I could see that Sarah’s mother’s maiden name was Slater, so this was obviously the correct marriage. But who was William Holyland? I knew he wasn’t native to Derbyshire – there were no Holyland families from this area. How did this family fit into my study? Obviously I needed a copy of the marriage certificate, which I duly bought. 

 I learnt from this that William was “of full age” and a farm servant living in Belper; his father was named as Thomas Holyland, also a farm labourer. Hannah was 22, a farm servant in Ashbourne, and the daughter of Samuel Slater. She and William married in the registry office in Ashbourne and Hannah may well have been in labour whilst she made her mark on the certificate, as Sarah was born the following day! 


Thanks to my previously-mentioned obsession with spread sheets, (https://holylandons.blogspot.com/2020/06/in-praise-of-spreadsheets.html) I could immediately see that there was in fact only one William Holyland across the whole of England that fitted the bill. This William Holyland was baptised in January 1844 in Syston, Leicestershire ; his mother Sarah had died when William was young and by 1861, his father Thomas was working as a carter in Crich, Derbyshire, just 3 miles from both Pentrich and Heage. William himself was probably then working as a shepherd in Nottinghamshire. 

Similarly, I could only find one likely candidate for Hannah Slater; born in Kirk Ireton (also in the Ashbourne registration district) in 1844, the daughter of Samuel Slater and his wife Sarah. Hannah was with her family in Kirk Ireton in the 1851 census – I have as yet been unable to find her in the 1861 census. So now I had the correct family and knew where came from and where they fitted in to the wider Holyland tree.

But where did they go? There were no other registered births for this couple and no sign of them in 1871. Neither could I see any likely death registrations for William or for Hannah. Further sleuthing was needed, and part 2 of this will tell of what I found about William’s story. 

https://holylandons.blogspot.com/2020/12/a-tale-of-three-weddings-pt-2-williams.html 

https://holylandons.blogspot.com/2020/12/a-tale-of-three-weddings-pt-3-hannahs.html

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