Daily AncestorSchoolmistress
A schoolmistress was a woman who taught or ran a school; in rural America she was often called the schoolmarm.
Through the 1800s, more and more women taught in district and town schools, often while young and unmarried.
Schoolmarm was the informal American word and later took on a sense of strictness. In a census the occupation may simply read teacher or teaching school.
As seen in a recordOccupation column of the 1850 to 1880 census
Lydia Field, 21, Schoolmistress, Vt.
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Daily Ancestor. "Schoolmistress." Dictionary of Old Record Words. https://dailyancestor.com/dictionary/occupations/schoolmistress. Last checked 2026-10-01.