Samuel Merrill first appeared in a Sheffield directory in 1797 as a pen knife cutler at Pond Street, using the trade mark ‘MY DESIRE’.  He was also a victualler.  In 1811, Samuel Merrill was listed as a fork maker at Pond Street.  He was presumably related to other Merrill fork makers, such as Ralph Merrill.  The records of the Company of Cutlers listed Samuel Merrill, the son of Ralph (a gardener at Pitsmoor), who was apprenticed to Robert Fisher, a knife maker, and granted his Freedom in 1805.
 
Samuel worked as a fork maker at Pond Street until his death on 5 August 1825, aged 76.   He was interred at Howard Street Congregational Chapel.   The burial register also recorded the death of his wife, Sarah née Birley (whom he had married in 1771 and who predeceased him in 1820, aged 60); and their son, Samuel, who died in 1831, aged 49.  (Their remains were later transferred to Abbey Lane Cemetery.)  After Samuel’s death, an auction of his stock-in-trade, working tools, materials, fixtures, and household furniture was advertised at 15 Pond Street.  The sale included ‘five excellent hearths of tools, one excellent stamp, a very good and powerful fly (both stamp and fly replete with both dyes [sic], beds, cutters, etc., to a great extent); about 130 gross of finished and unfinished forks of various sorts and sizes, about 7 cwt of excellent and good steel of an approved mark, seven vices, workboards, ceilings, and a great variety of other useful effects suitable for the business of fork maker’.  The advertisement added that the ‘Premises have been occupied near 50 Years as a Manufactory of Forks with great success’ (Sheffield Independent, 3 September 1825).