Daily AncestorBroom-maker
A broom-maker made brooms, mostly from the stiff seed heads of broomcorn bound to wooden handles.
Early brooms were bundles of twigs fixed onto long handles. In the United States the Shakers grew broomcorn and made brooms for sale, starting at Watervliet, New York, in 1798, and they credit one of their own, Theodore Bates, with the idea of making the round corn broom flat.
The word broom itself comes from the shrub whose twigs were tied into early brooms; from the 1400s it gradually replaced the older English word besom for the household tool.
As seen in a recordOccupation column of the 1850 to 1910 census
Isaac Hale, 50, Broom maker
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Daily Ancestor. "Broom-maker." Dictionary of Old Record Words. https://dailyancestor.com/dictionary/occupations/broom-maker. Last checked 2026-10-10.