Daily AncestorDyer
A dyer colored yarn, cloth or other goods with dyes, either in a small dye house or in the dye room of a textile mill.
Dyers boiled and steeped goods in vats of dye, first made from plants and insects and, from the later 1800s, increasingly from manufactured chemicals. The work was hot, wet and heavy.
In a mill town a dyer is usually a mill employee. In a city directory a dyer may instead have run a shop that dyed and cleaned clothing for customers, so check the industry or the business address.
As seen in a recordOccupation column of the 1850 to 1880 census
Wm. Booth, 45, Dyer, England
Sources
How to cite this page
Daily Ancestor. "Dyer." Dictionary of Old Record Words. https://dailyancestor.com/dictionary/occupations/dyer. Last checked 2026-10-01.