Richard Walton (bapt.1756-1818) was a Quaker.  His father was Richard; his mother was Sarah.  Richard Jun. may have been apprenticed as a cutler in 1771.   Apprenticeship records listed Richard Walton, the son of Richard (a grocer), who was trained by cutler Joseph Clarber (possibly Clarbour) and granted his Freedom in 1779.  Certainly, Richard Walton was listed in Sheffield directories (1787, 1797) as a table knife maker at Whitecroft, with a cleaver (picture) and ‘WALTON’ as a trade mark.  In 1779, he married Hannah, the daughter of Arthur Jepson (a clothier), of Fulstone, Kirkburton.  According to the Quaker record of the ceremony, Richard’s father was a shoemaker.

By 1801, Richard Walton was a partner in  Calow, Skinner & Co (with Charles Calow and Samuel Skinner).  Calow left in 1801; and Walton and Skinner parted in 1805.   In the following year, Richard married Hannah Rowntree (1761-1833), who was the daughter of William Rowntree (a yeoman) of Pickering.  Present at this Quaker marriage were Thomas Colley (cutler), Jarvis Brady (draper), and Daniel Doncaster (file maker).   Richard and Hannah had a son: Richard (1807-1881).   By 1811, Richard Walton was an ironmonger and factor at High Street.   One of his suppliers was Peter Stubs, the Warrington file maker.  In 1805, Walton haggled with Stubs over the discount terms on files, with Walton remarking that he had sold £300 worth of Stubs’ files when the discount was favourable (Ashton, 1939¹).  Towards the end of his life, Walton was a pin maker at Cornhill.   He died on 17 February 1818 and was buried at the Friends’ burial ground at Sheffield.  His executors (widow Hannah and Daniel Doncaster) posted a notice ‘To Dealers in Pins’ that they had disposed of the stock and tools to Thomas Phipson’s Imperial Pin Manufactory, Birmingham.  They recommended that House to Richard Walton’s Friends (Leeds Intelligencer, 17 August 1818).

^1. Ashton, T S, An Eighteenth Century Industrialist: Peter Stubs of Warrington 1756-1806 (Manchester, 1939)