Daily AncestorPewterer
A pewterer made plates, mugs, spoons, basins and other household goods from pewter, a gray alloy mostly of tin.
Pewter was the everyday tableware of many colonial homes, cheaper than silver and more durable than pottery. Pewterers cast it in molds and finished it on a lathe, and also melted down worn pieces to recast them.
Older pewter could contain a lot of lead. As cheap pottery and tinware spread in the 1800s, the trade declined, and many pewterers became tinsmiths or britannia ware makers.
As seen in a recordColonial and early 1800s records
Wm. Kerr, pewterer, of Philadelphia
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Daily Ancestor. "Pewterer." Dictionary of Old Record Words. https://dailyancestor.com/dictionary/occupations/pewterer. Last checked 2026-10-01.