Daily AncestorBootmaker
A bootmaker made boots, and often shoes, by hand; census rules of 1870 and 1880 kept the title for men who made the whole boot in a small shop.
The word simply means a maker of boots, and dictionaries also give it as a name for a cobbler.
By 1870 much footwear came from factories where each worker did one step. The 1870 and 1880 instructions told enumerators not to call a man a shoemaker or bootmaker unless he made the entire boot or shoe in a small shop; a factory hand was to be described as working in a boot and shoe factory. So a census bootmaker is a true craftsman of the old kind.
As seen in a recordOccupation column of the 1850 to 1900 census
Hans Brink, 52, Bootmaker, Prussia
Sources
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Daily Ancestor. "Bootmaker." Dictionary of Old Record Words. https://dailyancestor.com/dictionary/occupations/bootmaker. Last checked 2026-10-10.