Daily AncestorCarder
A carder was a worker who combed raw wool or cotton to clean and straighten the fibers before spinning, by hand or on a carding machine.
Carding untangles and cleans fiber and lines it up so it can be spun. Early on it was done at home with hand cards; by the 1800s carding mills and then large textile mills did it by machine.
A carder in the census may be a hand worker, a mill hand tending carding machines, or the owner of a small carding mill that served local farmers.
As seen in a recordOccupation column of the 1880 to 1920 census
Jno. Shaw, 40, Carder in woolen mill, R.I.
How to cite this page
Daily Ancestor. "Carder." Dictionary of Old Record Words. https://dailyancestor.com/dictionary/occupations/carder. Last checked 2026-10-01.