Daily AncestorTallyman
A tallyman kept count of goods as they were moved, such as cargo coming off a ship or lumber leaving a yard, recording each load.
On a wharf the tallyman stood at the gangway or hatch and marked every sack, bale or barrel that passed, so the owners could check the count against the ship's papers. Lumber yards, coal yards and farms used tallymen in the same way.
In Britain a tallyman could also be a seller who collected payments in installments. In American occupation columns the counting job is far more common.
As seen in a recordOccupation column of the 1850 to 1880 census
Jas. Gill, 37, Tallyman, Wharf
Sources
How to cite this page
Daily Ancestor. "Tallyman." Dictionary of Old Record Words. https://dailyancestor.com/dictionary/occupations/tallyman. Last checked 2026-10-01.