Daily AncestorTinner
A tinner was a tinsmith who made and repaired tinware such as cups, pails, lanterns, roofing and gutters.
Tinware was thin iron coated with tin, cheap and rustproof. A tinner cut, bent and soldered it into kitchen goods, stovepipes, gutters and roofing. Many hardware stores had a tinner in the back shop.
In Britain tinner could also mean a worker in a tin mine, but in American census returns it almost always means the tinsmith.
As seen in a recordOccupation column of the 1880 to 1920 census
Geo. Ritter, 27, Tinner, Ohio
How to cite this page
Daily Ancestor. "Tinner." Dictionary of Old Record Words. https://dailyancestor.com/dictionary/occupations/tinner. Last checked 2026-10-01.