Daily AncestorCopyist
A copyist was paid to make copies by hand, of documents, manuscripts, music or paintings.
Before mechanical copying, every extra copy of a text had to be written out with a pen. The word now mostly means a music copyist, who writes neat parts from a composer's score; until the 1990s this was done by hand with pen, staff paper and ruler.
Copyist is also used for an artist who copies other painters' works. In older records it usually names someone employed to write out documents.
As seen in a recordOccupation column of the 1860 to 1910 census
Miss Julia Penn, 26, Copyist
How to cite this page
Daily Ancestor. "Copyist." Dictionary of Old Record Words. https://dailyancestor.com/dictionary/occupations/copyist. Last checked 2026-10-10.