Daily AncestorTelegrapher
A telegrapher sent and received messages in Morse code over telegraph lines, often at a railroad station or telegraph office.
Telegraph operators tapped out and decoded Morse code. Every railroad station needed one to receive train orders, and many small-town operators were also station agents.
The Civil War, with its shortage of men, opened telegraph work to women, and many later operators were women. Census entries may read telegraph operator or abbreviate it as teleg. op.
As seen in a recordOccupation column of the 1880 to 1920 census
Nellie Ward, 22, Telegraph operator
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Daily Ancestor. "Telegrapher." Dictionary of Old Record Words. https://dailyancestor.com/dictionary/occupations/telegrapher. Last checked 2026-10-01.