Daily AncestorBlacksmith
A blacksmith heated and hammered iron and steel to make and mend tools, hardware and wagon parts, and often shod horses as well.
The black refers to the dark scale that forms on hot iron. A blacksmith could make and repair almost anything metal, from nails and chain to farm tools. Shoeing was the farrier's specialty, but many smiths shod horses too.
Census instructions treated blacksmith as a skilled trade. In 1930 enumerators were told that a child given such a trade was probably a helper or apprentice, and in 1940 to write entries like blacksmith's helper or blacksmith's apprentice.
As seen in a recordOccupation column of the 1850 to 1940 census
Hiram Cobb, 45, Blacksmith
How to cite this page
Daily Ancestor. "Blacksmith." Dictionary of Old Record Words. https://dailyancestor.com/dictionary/occupations/blacksmith. Last checked 2026-10-10.