Daily AncestorCoachmaker
A coachmaker built carriages, coaches and other horse-drawn vehicles, often in a shop with separate hands for the body, wheels, trimming and painting.
Carriage making brought several trades under one roof: woodworkers framed the body, wheelwrights made wheels, smiths forged the iron, trimmers did the upholstery and painters finished it. The owner was usually listed as coachmaker or carriage maker.
Some carriage makers moved into building automobile bodies in the early 1900s, which is why coachbuilder later meant a builder of car bodies.
As seen in a recordOccupation column of the 1850 to 1880 census
Wm. Abbot, 41, Coachmaker, Conn.
Sources
How to cite this page
Daily Ancestor. "Coachmaker." Dictionary of Old Record Words. https://dailyancestor.com/dictionary/occupations/coachmaker. Last checked 2026-10-01.