Daily AncestorCooper
A cooper was a craftsman who made and repaired barrels, casks, tubs and buckets from wooden staves bound with hoops.
Barrels were the shipping containers of the past, holding flour, salt pork, fish, molasses, whiskey and whale oil. A cooper shaped wooden staves, fitted them tightly, and bound them with iron or wooden hoops.
Coopers worked in towns, at breweries and distilleries, and aboard whaling ships, where they assembled casks for the oil. The trade gave us the surname Cooper.
As seen in a recordOccupation column of the 1850 to 1880 census
Danl. Heath, 36, Cooper, Me.
How to cite this page
Daily Ancestor. "Cooper." Dictionary of Old Record Words. https://dailyancestor.com/dictionary/occupations/cooper. Last checked 2026-10-01.