Sometimes your genealogy research may take you pretty far back in time. That is a good thing. If you are able to trace your roots back far enough, you may come across some unfamiliar terms as far as what your ancestors did for employment. Here is a sampling of what kinds of things people used to do for work.
If one of your ancestors was an ordinary, that does not mean that they were typical or boring. In fact, depending upon what kinds of guests frequented their inn, their days as an innkeeper may have been far from mundane. Some inns have been around for many, many years. If your ancestor was an ordinary (innkeeper) and you know the name of the inn that he or she kept, try looking online to see if it still exists. Perhaps you could even visit it one day.
When you come across paperwork that says that your relative was a snob, don’t feel like you are descended from a bunch of elitists. Back in the day, a snob was a cobbler or shoe repair person. That kind of work is not at all elitist, in fact it is a far cry from what we think when we hear the word snob today.
Your distant ancestor may have been a duffer. This does not mean that they spent leisurely afternoons on the golf course. In fact, their afternoons were likely spent making sales calls because a duffer was a peddler.
Here’s a confusing one – at some point, farmers were referred to as framars and tax collectors or bailiffs were known as farmers. Sometimes, though, an old occupation’s name describes it as it really is. This is the case with fence viewers; they really did have the job of inspecting fences.
If you see that someone was working as a waiter way back when, chances are that they were not serving dinner in a restaurant. The term was originally used for customs officers who waited for ships so that they could collect duties on incoming shipments of cargo.
These are just a few of the occupations that people used to have years ago. Just think – someday, people may be looking in reference books to see what our job titles meant.