Daily AncestorLime burner
A lime burner ran a lime kiln, roasting limestone at very high heat to make quicklime for mortar, plaster, whitewash and spreading on fields.
Lime was essential for building and farming. The lime burner loaded broken limestone and fuel into a kiln, kept it burning for days and drew out the lime, a hot and dusty job.
Old lime kilns still stand in many rural areas. If an ancestor was a lime burner, look for a kiln near a limestone outcrop on or near their land.
As seen in a recordOccupation column of the 1850 to 1880 census
Henry Gill, 50, Lime burner, Maine
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Daily Ancestor. "Lime burner." Dictionary of Old Record Words. https://dailyancestor.com/dictionary/occupations/limeburner. Last checked 2026-10-01.