The name Jervis has been linked with the influx of Dutch religious and political refugees to Sheffield in the sixteenth century (Leader, 1875).  However, this is no more than tradition.  A published pedigree traced the family to Hansworth and Tinsley, where the first Jervises were farmers.   John Jervis (1712-1784) and his son, John (1741-1823), appeared in the 1774 directory of Sheffield as cutlers at Peacroft (with individual marks).  John (presumably Jun.) registered a silver mark in the following year.  Also listed in 1774 was the latter’s elder brother, William (1745-1815), who was a cutler at Silver Street.   On 18 December 1787, John Sen. died.  In the directory in that year, John Jun. was a pen and pocket knife cutler at Meadow Street.  He also made metal-framed knives, using a trade mark that included the letter ‘C’.  William was making pen and pocket knives at Whitecroft.  In 1789, he had registered a silverware mark (‘WJ’) and a mark for silver plate (‘WJERVIS’, with a picture of a bow and arrow).   In the late 1780s, John played a leading role in the dispute between Freemen and the Company of Cutlers, which contested the authority of the Company over the cutlery trade (Macdonald, 2005¹).

John and William Jervis appeared again in the 1797 directory.   But within a few years, William and his sons, William (1772-1837) and Luke (1781-1810), had formed an ironmongery business.  This was dissolved in 1809, the year before Luke’s death.  Also dissolved in 1809 was Luke’s partnership with Robert Spencer and William Radcliffe as white metal manufacturers.  In the directory (1811), William Jervis & Son was listed at Whitecroft as a brass stamp and inlaid metal worker.  William Jervis Sen. died on 1 September 1815; his brother, John, on 9 August 1823, aged 82.  According to an obituarist: ‘Few persons were better acquainted with the traditional and historical particulars of Hallamshire than Mr [John] Jervis was, and as few derived more gratification from their antiquarian pursuits’ (Sheffield Independent, 28 August 1823). 

William Jun. continued as a brass stamper and white metal worker at Whitecroft.  He may have been the individual, who partnered James Morton as a manufacturer of pen and pocket knives (an arrangement dissolved in 1830).  William died on 23 January 1837, aged 65 (Sheffield Iris, 31 January 1837).  William’s son-in-law was John Dickinson (of Dickinson & Rollisson.   William’s brother, George Jervis (1786-1851), was a well-known Sheffield druggist.  Several members of the Jervis family were buried at St Peter & St Paul churchyard.

^1. Macdonald, Julie, ‘The Freedom of Election: The Company of Cutlers in Hallamshire and the Growth of Radicalism in Sheffield, 1784-1792’ (Sheffield University PhD, 2 vols, 2005)