Daily AncestorLighterman
A lighterman worked on a lighter, a flat-bottomed barge used to move cargo between ships and the shore in a harbor.
Big ships could not always reach the dock, so cargo was moved to and from them on lighters. Lightermen handled these barges, sometimes rowing or poling them, later working with tugs.
You find lightermen in New York, Boston, Philadelphia and other busy harbors.
As seen in a recordOccupation column of the 1880 to 1920 census
Owen Rourke, 31, Lighterman, N.Y.
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Daily Ancestor. "Lighterman." Dictionary of Old Record Words. https://dailyancestor.com/dictionary/occupations/lighterman. Last checked 2026-10-01.