Daily AncestorWell digger
A well digger dug water wells by hand, sinking a shaft down to groundwater and lining it with stone or brick.
For most of history wells were sunk by hand digging, and the shaft was often lined with brick or stone as the digging went deeper. The well digger did this hard work, down to the water-bearing ground.
Later, driven and drilled wells replaced many hand-dug ones, so a well driller in a later census does the same job by machine.
As seen in a recordOccupation column of the 1870 to 1910 census
Abner Cole, 40, Well digger, Kansas
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Daily Ancestor. "Well digger." Dictionary of Old Record Words. https://dailyancestor.com/dictionary/occupations/well-digger. Last checked 2026-10-10.