Daily AncestorCowboy
A cowboy tended cattle on the ranches and open range of the American West, usually working on horseback.
The historic American cowboy of the late 1800s grew out of the vaquero traditions of northern Mexico. Earlier, in Britain from 1820 to 1850, cowboy meant a young boy who tended the family or village cows; by 1849 it had its modern sense of an adult cattle handler in the West. Cowhand appears from 1852 and cowpoke from 1881.
A wrangler was a cowboy who looked after the horses used to work the cattle.
As seen in a recordOccupation and industry columns of the 1910 to 1940 census
Lafe Haskell, 22, Cowboy, Cattle ranch
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Daily Ancestor. "Cowboy." Dictionary of Old Record Words. https://dailyancestor.com/dictionary/occupations/cowboy. Last checked 2026-10-12.