This cutler was born on 7 August 1790 at Skye Edge, Sheffield.  Apparently, he was the son of John (a cutler) and his wife, Ann.  His father was said to have been a cousin to Samuel Roberts, Park Grange (Roberts, Cadman); while his mother was cousin to Jonathan Crookes (Sheffield Independent, 1 May 1882).  Roberts was apprenticed to Joseph Barker, a cutler, and then worked for a stag cutter in Figtree Lane.  In the Census (1841), James and his son (also named James) were enumerated as stag cutters, who lived in Broomhall.  It appears that James Sen. had been widowed.  His radicalism led Roberts to become one of the first Chartists.  

In 1849, he left Sheffield for America and settled in Waterbury, Connecticut, where a group of Sheffield cutlers had found jobs.  He had not lost his radical leanings and, after objecting to the ‘tyranny’ of their American masters, he and his fellow cutlers established the New York Knife Co in Matteawan, Duchess County, in New York.  In 1856, the Sheffielders moved to Orange County in Walden, Connecticut.  The president of the company was Thomas J. Bradley, in whose house Roberts stayed for a time.  After the Civil War, Roberts’s son made extended visits to Sheffield to recruit more men.  James Roberts Sen. died at his son’s home in Thomaston, Connecticut, on 31 March 1882.  He was aged 91.  His burial was at Hillside Cemetery.  Some of his letters home have been published in Erickson (1972)¹.

^1. Erickson, Charlotte J, Invisible Immigrants (London, 1972)