John Sorby (1755-1829) was Master Cutler in 1806 (the first Master Cutler in the family since 1669).  His Spital Hill business, apparently launched in 1780, made edge tools and shears.  He may have partnered his brother, Thomas, in Sorby, Hobson & Sorby.  By the 1820s, John Sorby & Sons was a merchant, selling a variety of products that included trade knives, such as those for butchers and cooks.  The company exported trade knives or dags (short, flat daggers) to American frontiersmen and Native Americans for chopping, scalping, and stabbing. Examples are shown in Levine (1997)¹ and Grant (1984)².  John Sorby became wealthy.  He lived at Orgreave Hall, near Rotherham, until his death on 30 July 1829, aged 73 (his wife, Elizabeth, had died on 4 February, aged 68).  They were buried in Attercliffe.   

His sons, John Sorby (1786-1861) and Henry Sorby (1790-1846), had taken over the firm, using after 1827 the mark ‘I & H SORBY’.  This was besides their father’s hanging sheep mark (the ‘Golden Fleece’, assigned in 1791), which hung over the entrance to Spital Hill Works to remind visitors of its renowned sheep shears.  In 1808, John Jun. registered the thistle mark. John and Henry were joined by another brother, Alfred (1800-1866).  By the early 1840s, the Sorbys (Alfred, John Jun., and the latter’s son, John Francis) were partners with the Lockwoods Bros (William, John, and Joseph Lockwood).  That link – fostered by the marriage of Thomas’s daughter, Ann, to William Lockwood – led in 1844 to Lockwood Bros acquiring John Sorby & Sons.
 

^1. Levine, B., Levine’s Guide to Knives and Their Values (Northbrook, IL, 4th edn., 1997

^2. Grant, Madison, The Knife in Homespun America (The Author, 1984)