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This Kind Of Job Hunt Can Net A Toilet Parlor

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By SHARON TATE MOODY Tribune correspondent

Published: January 11, 2009

Are your ancestors lolling in your genealogy files, identified only by their dates of birth and death, and by whom they married? Perhaps you should breathe a little life into their dull existences by finding out how they supported themselves and their families.

People's occupations usually defined who they were and influenced where they settled, their standing in the community, and their financial worth. So to understand our ancestors as real people, we must learn about their callings in life.

The earliest American ancestors for most of us were farmers. They were the mainstays of the Colonies. Learning what crops our farmers planted and the extent of the acreage they owned will tell us about their standing in the community. Researching what was involved in their types of farming will help us to understand their daily lives.

Getting these details may take some digging. For ancestors alive during the Colonial period, look for shipping records to see whether your ancestor sent his goods back to England for sale. Farmers of that era often got into disputes with merchants and ship captains. Look for court records to see what might be hiding there.

What we commonly refer to as "the censuses" are population schedules. From 1850 to 1880, nonpopulation schedules provided specific details about those in agriculture, industry and manufacturing. This is a good source to dig deeper into the operations of your family farmers.

For these reports, each farmer gave the number of improved and unimproved acres of land he owned and placed a value on the total farm. He then gave the value of his farm implements and that of his livestock. He enumerated the bushels of different crops he produced. By analyzing not only what your ancestor produced, but what his neighbors did, you'll get an idea of the size of his farm as compared with others nearby.

It took an array of tradesmen to support the farming community. Carpenters constructed buildings on farms and in towns and cities and made cabinets and other furniture. Coopers built the casks and barrels in which whiskey, corn, tobacco and other vital crops were stored or shipped. Without wheelwrights, few farmers or merchants could have kept their wagons rolling. Blacksmiths did double duty: They kept the horses shod and made various iron products, including nails.

Millers ground the farmers' grains and tanners stripped meat from the hides of domestic and wild animals, and processed them so they could be made into clothing and shoes.

Where can you look to find your ancestors' occupations? They crop up in a variety of places. Here are a few you should try:

•Men from all walks of life went to court to settle their disagreements. Until the late 19th century, women did not go to court but were represented by male relatives or friends. You usually can find business dispute records in the local courts in the county where the men lived.

•For more recent ancestors, look for death certificates, which were not required in most states until the turn of the 20th century. From a death certificate, I learned that my great granduncle Doc Ward Hulsey's occupation led directly to his demise. The 1948 document shows his occupation as rancher and his cause of death as a "penetrating wound to the lung due to fractured ribs from a fall from a horse."

•Wills and probate files offer indirect evidence of an ancestor's occupation. For example, in his 1803 will, Edward Applewhaite directed that his law books be sold to pay his funeral expenses. Although this isn't proof he was a lawyer, it is evidence that can guide future research.

•Early land deeds sometimes gave a buyer's or seller's chosen work even though it had no bearing on the transfer of the property. In 1643, Capt. James Holdipp sold 200 acres to Thomas Applewhaite, who was described as a "citizen and clothworker of London." In another deed two years later, Applewhaite was a "merchant."

•If your ancestor was a city slicker, check to see whether city directories exist for the town in which he lived. You can find these in the town's library and they often list the occupation of each employed resident.

•The 1820 and 1830 censuses gave statistics on the number of people in each household who were engaged in agriculture, commerce or manufacturing.

•Beginning in 1850 the censuses probably are the most useful for finding an ancestor's calling because an occupation was listed for each male in the household. In 1870 the occupations of males and females were recorded.

Sometimes a profession doesn't look impressive at first glance. For example, in the 1920 District of Columbia census, 34-year-old Sigrid Larsen, who had become a citizen in 1909 after emigrating from Sweden, was listed as a cook working for a family. Her occupation becomes more impressive if you look to the head of the household and see that he was Woodrow Wilson. This family lived at "the White House, Pennsylvania Avenue."

Professional researcher Maria Hopper told me about one of the most unusual she'd ever found. She located Mary Simmons, age 40, whose occupation in the 1900 census in Denver was "toilet parlor." Maria Googled the term and found her answer in the 1892 Ladies Home Journal.

An advertisement in the magazine wanted ladies "to help us at home advertising the popular, dainty and elegant Sylvan Toilet Preparations."

"Can you open a toilet parlor at home to display goods?" it asked readers.

Sounds to me like Mary might have been an early version of the Avon woman.

It can be frustrating to find ancient, baffling occupations. In addition to Googling, there are a number of resources for learning more about these old trades.

Genealogists are good at supporting and assisting each other. Message boards are a good place to see unusual occupations others have found and to post your own. A very popular one is at http://boards.ancestry.com/topics .occupations.

One researcher posted a query there after she found her ancestors listed in the 1881 United Kingdom census as "medical rubbers." A helpful researcher directed her to Google Books (books.google.com) to search for history of massage, which netted a book titled "The History of Massage" by Robert Noah Calvin. Anyone interested in this topic will be treated to a fascinating occupational history and will learn that a medical rubber is someone who performed therapeutic massage.

If you prefer to research offline, a handy item to have on your bookshelf is Nancy Shield's "Dictionary of Occupational Terms: A Guide to the Special Language and Jargon of Hundreds of Careers."

It may take a lot of research to identify an occupation, but if you stick to gathering names and dates for your forefathers and mothers, you should not call yourself a genealogist. Studying our ancestors means putting everything into a historical and social perspective.

You can find out more about your ancestor than just what he did to put food on the table. In doing that, you'll find out just what sort of men and women they were.

Sharon Tate Moody is past president of the Association of Professional Genealogists. Send your genealogy questions and event announcements to her in care of Getaway, The Tampa Tribune, 200 S. Parker St., Tampa, FL 33606 or stmoody0720@mac.com. She regrets

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