This horn merchant was started in 1817 by Samuel Merrill (1790-1868), who was the son of a gardener.  By 1821, he was a haft presser in Stag’s Head Yard in Old Haymarket.   By 1837, after a spell as a shopkeeper in Cheney Row, he had joined Thomas Jarvis as a haft and scale presser and bone dealer in Holly Street.  During the 1840s, this firm became Merrill, Jarvis & Merrill, with the addition of John Merrill (Samuel’s son).  This ended in 1852, when John Merrill & Co appeared in Holly Street.  Thomas Jarvis started his own venture in the Orchard Lane premises of William Carlisle (Sheffield Independent, 7 February 1852).   Jarvis retired and died in Southport on 20 March 1883, aged 86, leaving £8,494.  Samuel Merrill, of Oak Hill, Nether Edge, died on 20 September 1868, leaving under £5,000.

In 1870, John Merrill was joined by his son, William Henry Merrill.  (John’s offspring also included John Jun., who became an electro-plater in a firm that became Pendleton & Dix, and later a civil engineer.  Another son, Joseph, partnered Thomas Ellin  In 1871, Merrill’s employed a dozen men and a boy.  John Merrill Sen. lived at Endcliffe Vale and died on 19 December 1875, aged 75.  He was buried in the General Cemetery (in an unconsecrated grave).  Benjamin John Taylor (1847-1917 had joined Merrill’s in 1865 and played an increasingly important role in the firm as the partner of W. Henry Merrill.  He was the son of James Taylor (d. 1876), a horn merchant, Pool Works, Fargate and Burgess Street, and his wife, Ann.  In 1881, Benjamin Taylor told the Census that he employed nine men and four boys.  In 1890, Taylor took over Merrill’s and retained the name.  He recruited his 14-year-old son, Wilmot Taylor (1876-1950), as a horn cutter at a salary of £6 10s per year.  

By 1893, Merrill’s had absorbed Wm. Bruce & Sons, Lambert Street, and was described as an ivory and horn merchant, and cutter and presser of any description of horn and ivory handles and scales, including machete and hunting knife patterns.  Benjamin Taylor retired in 1913.  He lived at West Lodge, Claremont, and died on 22 August 1917, aged 69.  He left £4,725.  His son recalled a man of ‘boundless energy and industry, and of all the horn merchants of his time undoubtedly the most prominent’ (Taylor, 1927¹).   Merrill’s name did not appear in the directory (1919), though it still traded.  Wilmot Taylor, when he wrote his history of the horn trade in 1927, described Merrill’s as the oldest enterprise in the trade.

^1. Taylor, Wilmot, The Sheffield Horn Industry (Sheffield, 1927)