This branch of the Willey family has been traced to the eighteenth-century nail and file industry in Rotherham.  In Sheffield, documented cutlery interests began with William Willey (c.1789-1853), who was listed as a pen and pocket knife manufacturer in South Street (1828) and in Button Lane (1833).  William served an apprenticeship as a pen knife maker to Charles Roebuck and was granted his Freedom in 1831 (and the right to use the trade mark ‘WILLEY-RAILWAY’).  He became an Assistant at the Company of Cutlers.  William was thrice married and twice widowed.  His sons by his second marriage in 1814 included Charles (1814-1883), John (1815-1832), Henry (1817-1873), and William Jun. (1821-1896).  By 1837, the surviving sons had joined the business, which was styled ‘& Sons’.  Two years later, the firm announced its removal from Button Lane to Chester Street (Sheffield Independent, 6 April 1839).

In 1844, William Willey & Sons was dissolved.  Henry had already moved to Liverpool, where he continued to work as a cutler.  According to the Census (1861), he employed one man and a boy.  He lived at Maghull, near Liverpool, and died there on 23 February 1873, aged 56.  He left under £14,000.  Charles remained in Sheffield, where his father still owned property and where other members of the Willey family apparently helped manufacture pen, pocket, and table knives in Chester Street.  (Charles Willey, the son of William’s brother, Jonathan, was also a cutler.  He died in Eldon Street on 15 January 1853, aged 27, and was buried in St George’s churchyard, Portobello).  Eventually, Charles also moved to Liverpool – probably in about 1870.  Meanwhile, by 1851 William Willey (and his youngest son, William) had settled in London.  William Sen. was listed as a cutlery manufacturer in Fish Street Hill (Monument).  He died there on 10 April 1853, aged 64, leaving under £1,000.  After William’s death, his son-in-law, Evan Evans, took over the Fish Street Hill shop, and his son William directed another cutlery shop on the Ratcliff Highway in the East End docklands.  It continued operating until the 1890s.  (This profile draws on information kindly provided by Stephen Henley, a Willey descendant.)