Daily AncestorPeddler
A peddler was a traveling seller who carried small goods from house to house or town to town.
Peddlers carried goods on their backs, in carts or in wagons: tinware, cloth, notions, clocks and household goods. In rural America they brought store goods to farm families who rarely went to town.
Many immigrants started out peddling, among them Italians, Greeks and Jews. The 1900 census instructions asked enumerators to note what a peddler sold, so you may see entries like peddler, tinware.
As seen in a recordOccupation column of the 1880 to 1920 census
Isaac Levy, 24, Peddler, Germany
How to cite this page
Daily Ancestor. "Peddler." Dictionary of Old Record Words. https://dailyancestor.com/dictionary/occupations/peddler. Last checked 2026-10-01.