Samuel Mason
Born in 1820, Samuel Mason started his apprenticeship at the age of eleven at Joseph Mappin and was a fully-fledged knife maker by 1838. In the Census (1841), he may have the Samuel Mason, cutler, who was living in Infirmary Gardens with Mary (aged 55), who was possibly his mother. Like many Sheffield cutlers of that era, he looked for a better life across the Atlantic. On 30 March 1844, he set sail for New York – a journey that, according to his own account, took 105 days! He arrived ‘pen....
