Daily AncestorGrocer
A grocer kept a store selling food and everyday household goods; the word comes from an Old French word for a wholesaler.
The 1870 and 1880 instructions used grocer as the model of a merchant whose line could be named in a single word; others were to be written as dry goods merchant, coal dealer and so on.
In 1900 enumerators were warned not to call a salesman in a grocery store a clerk unless most of his work was on the books and accounts, so salesman, groceries is a common later entry for a grocer's employee.
As seen in a recordOccupation column of the 1850 to 1940 census
Henry Lutz, 43, Grocer
Sources
How to cite this page
Daily Ancestor. "Grocer." Dictionary of Old Record Words. https://dailyancestor.com/dictionary/occupations/grocer. Last checked 2026-10-10.