This business began as Holy & Newbould, button maker, which registered a silver mark from West Bar in 1774.   In 1787, the address was Sheffield Moor.  The partners were Thomas Holy (1752-1830), who was the brother of Daniel Holy, and William Newbould (1749-1802).  Thomas Holy was known as the ‘financier’ of Sheffield Methodism.  Newbould had married Holy’s daughter, Sarah, and so he partnered his father-in-law.  They became American traders, helped by George Suckley (1765-1845).  The latter had sailed for the USA in 1784 as a missionary.  Suckley, like Thomas Holy, was a Wesleyan Methodist.  He decided to stay in New York and by 1796 was the American representative of Holy, Newbould & Suckley.  Its business address was Sheffield Moor.  By the year of Newbould’s death, the firm was Holy & Suckley, American merchants, South Street.  

The partners had invested £15,000 in their business and established warehouses at New York, Boston, Baltimore, and Philadelphia (Crosskey, 2011¹).  They traded in buttons and silver plated wares, but also shipped cutlery and general hardware.  A letter book deposited at the New York Historical Society gives an insight into the Sheffield firm’s exports at this time.  The book belonged to Abraham Varick, a New York City dry goods merchant.  On 3 February 1800, for example, Varick wrote to Holy & Suckley ordering a variety of cutlery and other goods.  The shipment, which he wanted dispatched in one of the first substantial American sail vessels, included: table knives, pen and pocket knives, butchers’ knives, and scissors.  Stag, sham stag, buffalo, and bone were requested as handle materials on the knives.  Varick also ordered in the same consignment buttons, needles, combs, ink pots, and frying pans.

Holy, Suckley was listed in Sheffield directories until 1822, though the Newboulds remained as American merchants in South Street through the 1820s.  Thomas Holy died at Highfield House on 9 November 1830, aged 79.  A memorial tablet to his ‘piety and benevolence’ was placed in Carver Street Methodist Chapel.  Suckley became one of the most prominent and wealthy of New York citizens, selling a range of hardware in the USA, South America, and the West Indies.  He acquired substantial real estate in New York and married Catherine Rutsen (1768-1826) from a well-connected New York family.  George Suckley died on 17 June 1846, aged 81.  His descendants built a substantial villa, Wilderstein, in Rhinebeck (Duchess County, New York), which had extensive views of the Hudson River and the Catskills.   A collection of Suckley family papers is held at William L. Clements Library, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor.

^1. Crosskey, Gordon, Old Sheffield Plate: A History of the 18th Century Plated Trade (Sheffield, 2011)