Daily AncestorBreaker boy
A breaker boy was a boy who picked slate and rock out of coal by hand as it passed through a coal breaker.
In the anthracite region of Pennsylvania, coal was crushed and sorted in tall buildings called breakers. Boys as young as eight or ten sat on boards over chutes and picked out slate and other waste by hand.
The work was dusty and dangerous. Child labor laws gradually ended it in the early 1900s. Older men no longer able to mine sometimes did the same work.
As seen in a recordOccupation column of the 1880 to 1910 census
Michl. Joyce, 12, son, Slate picker, Penn.
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Daily Ancestor. "Breaker boy." Dictionary of Old Record Words. https://dailyancestor.com/dictionary/occupations/breaker-boy. Last checked 2026-10-01.