Daily AncestorOperative
An operative was a factory or mill worker, most often in a textile mill, as in cotton mill operative.
In the 1800s operative was the polite word for a worker who ran machines in a mill. Mill towns such as Lowell, Lawrence and Fall River had thousands of them, many young women and immigrants.
The 1870 and 1880 instructions told enumerators not to write just mill operative but to name the kind of mill, and 1900 asked for the specific job, such as spinner or weaver.
As seen in a recordOccupation column of the 1880 to 1920 census
Mary Kelly, 17, Operative in cotton mill, Mass.
Sources
How to cite this page
Daily Ancestor. "Operative." Dictionary of Old Record Words. https://dailyancestor.com/dictionary/occupations/operative. Last checked 2026-10-01.