| Description | Portrait of Alexander Peterkin, 1830, painted by T. Arowsmith. Alexander Peterkin was a bookseller and stationer living in Huntingdon High Street. He is in Pigott's Directories for both 1823/24 and 1830. He first appears in 1790, when he married Mary Thomas, a spinster of All Saints parish, on 26 June. He is described as a widower from Cheshunt in Hertfordshire. His application for a marriage licence on the day before, however, describes him as a bachelor, and there is a pencilled note in the margin saying the parties have heretofore been married in Scotland. His age is given just as 21 and upwards. He drew up his will on 22 July 1833, bequeathing his house and shop to a Mary Buswell, and £20 to the Independent Chapel in Huntingdon (now the County Record Office building). His will also expressly states that he was to have no gravestone, which is another indicator of nonconformist religious beliefs. Mary Buswell may have been his daughter, but there is no Buswell/Peterkin marriage recorded in the Hunts county marriage index. Alexander was buried on 26 February 1835, aged 76, and his will was proved on 28 November that year. |