Daily AncestorHousewright
A housewright was a builder of houses, especially wooden-framed ones; the term was common in colonial and early New England.
In early America a housewright did much of what we would now call carpentry and building: preparing timber, framing a house and raising it. The word appears often in New England deeds, where a man is identified by his trade.
By the mid 1800s most census takers wrote carpenter instead, so housewright points to older or more traditional records.
As seen in a recordNew England deeds and the 1850 census
Eben. Ware of Dedham, housewright, grants to...
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Daily Ancestor. "Housewright." Dictionary of Old Record Words. https://dailyancestor.com/dictionary/occupations/housewright. Last checked 2026-10-01.