Spinner

Before factories, a spinner was anyone, often a woman at home, who made thread on a spinning wheel. In 1800s and 1900s census returns the word usually means a mill worker who watched long rows of spindles, joined broken ends and kept the frames running.

From 1900 on, enumerators were told to name the kind of mill too, so later entries often read spinner, cotton mill or spinner, woolen mill. Do not confuse it with spinster, which by then meant an unmarried woman.