The Micklethwaite genealogy is difficult to unravel, not least because the name was sometimes spelled as ‘Mickelthwaite’ or ‘Mickelthwate’.  The first enterprise that can be traced was Micklethwaite & Co, a merchant and manufacturer of pen, pocket, sport’s, and fruit knives in Pond Street.  The senior partner of this firm (listed in 1787, with the trade mark ‘ZACA’) was Benjamin Micklethwaite, who died in 1798.  J. & B. Hounsfield traded nearby in Pond Hill.  In 1786, John Micklethwaite (unidentified) and John Hounsfield had registered a silver mark as plate workers in Pond Hill.  Micklethwaite & Co was active until 1814; and the linkage with the Hounsfields also continued until that date.  The various partners included: John, Josiah, and Benjamin Micklethwaite; and John and Bartholomew Hounsfield.  According to Leader (1876)¹, the original Benjamin Micklethwaite had two sons.  Unfortunately, Leader does not identify their names, but added:

One opened a shop in London, and soon lost what his father had left him.  He then went to Hamburg, and prepared some razors, which he sold with a few other things.  He made his boxes to hold a pair of razors … He carried on in this way until he returned to Sheffield; and at one time he had a good German trade conducted in several different places in the town.

Apparently, this was Benjamin Micklethwaite Jun., who partnered Josiah Micklethwaite until 1822; then was involved in T. & B. Micklethwaite; and finally operated his own workshops in West Street.  Leader added that his ’‘workmen were very respectable, honourable and upright.  Amongst them were none of the coarse jokes, indecent conversation, or unmeaning, empty, and profane jests so common among workmen in the workshops of the present day'.  Another commentator stated that Benjamin Micklethwaite had ‘inventive genius’, who introduced ‘frame polishing’ of spring knives (polishing without the aid of steam or water power), after the trades unions had blacklisted him for refusing to pay an advance (see also Thomas Amory).  He built and lived in Broombank House, Glossop Road, and died there on 13 January 1836, aged 50.  His burial is untraced.  John Micklethwaite (probably a son) was listed as a merchant and table, pen and pocket knife, and razor manufacturer in Glossop Road in 1837; and in Hollis Croft and Broad Lane in 1841, but not thereafter.  Other members of the Micklethwaite family are known to have settled in Germany.  The trade mark passed to Henry Wostenholm.

^1. Leader, Robert E, Reminiscences of Old Sheffield (Sheffield, 2nd edn 1876)