Editor: ‘Hello from our Sheffield to yours from across the Pond’

Our clever friends at Portland Works launched a campaign recently to track down original items of Rustnorstain, which have made their way from creation in the Steel City across the globe over the decades. So far, they’ve had a great response from Sheffielders – including Star readers and others in Pennsylvania. Yes, you read that correctly. Those lovely volunteers have even managed for their appeal to feature in the local newspaper Time-Observer.

Reporter Josh Cotton wrote: “Now I had to look up where Sheffield, UK actually is. I read it’s in Yorkshire. Now my only awareness of that place is from Downton Abbey which I suspect is not helpful here. It’s about a four hour drive north of London. If you look at the main island of the UK and put a dot in the middle about half way up, you’d be in the ballpark, still a little north.

“It’s a fair bit older than Sheffield, Pennsylvania – it’s town charter dates to 1297. With a population just shy of 600,000, it’s the third largest city in England district behind Leeds and, of course, London.”

Now it wouldn’t be in good spirits for one journalist to criticise another, yet alone one Sheffielder to point out the inaccuracies of another Sheffielder, so I’ll leave you to discuss.

But go easy because I also had to look up Sheffield, PA, to find out the latest figures on our namesake. I didn’t do very well but the census of 2010 apparently showed it having 1,123 people – that’s just 510 households, and 344 families.

I mean, they could all comfortably live in our own John Lewis building with space to spare … sigh, sorry, too soon?

Warren County’s Sheffield was named after us, obviously, by homesick early settlers in 1836 – an early tanning centre and on the site of the largest sawmill east of the Mississippi … just as Rustnorstain was created. Josh continues: “It seems at least theoretically possible that someone has this stuff here. Why? Because if I could afford cutlery from the other side of the world that has a direct connection to where I live, you’d bet I’d be interested. So… anyone got anything?”

God bless Sheffields and local newspapers everywhere.