Daily AncestorOverseer
An overseer was a supervisor of workers; on Southern plantations before 1865, the man who managed enslaved laborers for the owner.
The plain meaning is a supervisor, and textile mills also had overseers in charge of a room. In Southern records before emancipation, an overseer was usually a paid white manager who ran a plantation's daily work for its owner.
Later census instructions used farm overseer for a man managing a farm for wages. Overseer of the poor is a different office.
As seen in a recordOccupation column of the 1850 to 1900 census
Wm. Dunn, 29, Overseer, S.C.
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Daily Ancestor. "Overseer." Dictionary of Old Record Words. https://dailyancestor.com/dictionary/occupations/overseer. Last checked 2026-10-01.