Daily AncestorPapermaker
A papermaker made paper, by hand one sheet at a time or later on machines in a paper mill.
Paper is made by draining a watery pulp of fibers through a screen so a mat of fibers forms, then pressing and drying it. Before machines, every sheet was formed by hand by skilled workers. In Europe hemp and linen rags were the main source of pulp, with cotton later taking over.
Wiktionary also records an obsolete British slang sense, a person who gathered rags to sell, so read the context in very old records.
As seen in a recordOccupation column of the 1850 to 1880 census
Elihu Bascom, 44, Papermaker, Mass.
How to cite this page
Daily Ancestor. "Papermaker." Dictionary of Old Record Words. https://dailyancestor.com/dictionary/occupations/papermaker. Last checked 2026-10-12.