Old occupations · card C

Cobbler

A cobbler was a person who repaired shoes and boots, and sometimes made simple new ones.

A cobbler mended footwear: new soles, heels, patches and stitching. In the older British tradition this was separate from the cordwainer, who made new shoes, and the word cobbler could even suggest rough or clumsy work.

In American census returns cobbler, shoemaker and boot maker often overlap, so do not read too much into which word an enumerator chose.

As seen in a recordOccupation column of the 1880 to 1920 census
Jacob Kuntz, 52, Cobbler, Germany
How to cite this page

Daily Ancestor. "Cobbler." Dictionary of Old Record Words. https://dailyancestor.com/dictionary/occupations/cobbler. Last checked 2026-10-01.

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