Occupations During the Colonial Times
Table of Contents:
Introduction……….1
Chapter 1-How did people Earn Their Trade?………..2
Chapter 2- What kinds of jobs did women work V.s Men?……..3
Chapter 3-What were Some types of Important Jobs?……...4--7
Chapter 4- How Did jobs Come To Be? ……..8-9
Conclusion……….10
Glossary…………..11
Sources………………..12
Introduction
Have you ever wondered what jobs there were in colonial times? Or how you were trained to be able to work your job? What about the history about how jobs began? Well guess what, you are in luck. In this book you will be able to get the answer to all those questions, and more!
Chapter 1-How Did People Earn Their Trade? 
Have you ever wondered how people in colonial times got trained so they could work their jobs? Or even who their teacher was? In this chapter you will learn about all of those questions and more!
Just imagine learning one of the most rural jobs from colonial times. Learning from one of the masters of the job. You look up at him and motivate yourself to work harder. You know without the satisfying trade, you will never be able to work your job. Finally, after a long time of learning to perfect your skills for the job you would like to do, it happens. You earn your trade. Your trade.
What is trade?
What was the person being taught called?
The person that was being taught was called an apprentice. Some apprentices were children when they began to be taught. The prefered age was 14, so a full seven-year apprenticeship could be done by the time he was 21 years old. But, this was sometimes uncommon. The short apprenticeships in the American colonies most likely happened at an older age.
What kind of work did an apprentice work?
In order for an apprentice to learn his trade, he had to eventually had to do all the work of the trade. But for the first few years of his apprenticeship, he probably worked as a semi-skilled laborer.
What kind of hours did an apprentices work?
Apprentices always work alongside of their master. There isn’t a lot of evidence showing that the apprentice worked any longer than anyone other workers or his master.
The hours are varied because of the different seasons. It is known to be that they work eight hours per day in the winter, and sixteen hours per day in the summer. It seems that they worked very hard to get the job that they deserved.
Chapter 2- What Kinds of Jobs Did Women Work V.s Men?
Women and men both worked very different “jobs”. As you would think, men had a broader choice of jobs than women. In this chapter you will learn about the types of jobs women got to work, v.s the types of jobs men got to work.
What kinds of jobs did women get to work?
As you may know, women didn’t get as many rights in colonial times as us women get now. So that means, that they had a very limited choice of jobs. They could work jobs such as a milliner, or a Dame School teacher. This might be important because, it shows the limits that women had back then v.s what life is like for women nowadays.
For the most part though, women worked around the house. Their biggest job was to keep up with the at home jobs. That included caring for the kids, preserving food, working in the gardens, knitting and mending clothes for her family, making candles for the home, doing laundry, and even things that required heavy lifting. The women had to carry the heavy water buckets from the wells and/or creeks to their homes.
What kinds of jobs did men work?
Men had many more choices for jobs. They could do jobs such as blacksmiths, carpenters, millers, and farmers. They had a choice of many more jobs too. The men usually came home from long hours of working, and they were tired and sweaty. It seems that men worked very hard to keep their family on their feet.
Chapter 3-What Were Some Types of Important Jobs?
In Colonial America it was hard for a colonial to believe it if they didn’t have a blacksmith in their town, or a farmer. As you may think, jobs in colonial times were just as important as jobs today.
Blacksmith
One very important job was called the blacksmith. Each town had a blacksmith. This is probably because blacksmiths were very important to the colonies.
What were the items that blacksmiths made?Blacksmiths made very useful items. The majority of the items they made were iron. They made things such as tools, horse and oxen shoes, buckets, and everyday, household things. The iron items they made were very strong and durable.
It must have been that blacksmiths got a lot of business knowing that they made useful items, that everyone used.
What were some important tools blacksmiths used?
The blacksmith used two very important tools. One tool they used was called a forge. The forge was the most important tool for the blacksmiths. Without it they couldn’t work their job. The forge was used to heat and shape iron. It was pretty much a big fire place.
It seems like it was very hard to work the forge. He had to know how to control the temperature, and how hot the fire was by looking at what color the fire was. He also had to know how to adjust the temperature.
If the fire got too hot, the blacksmith would have to know to nick the water on the coals with sticks. There were no matches in colonial times, so the blacksmith had to make sure the fire didn’t go out. When morning came, he stoked the fire so it would start again. The blacksmith also used a special tool for the forge that he used to blow a lot of air into the fire to make it heat up.
The blacksmith also used a tool called an anvil. The anvil was used as a work surface. It was iron and 300 lbs. (136kg)! It could withstand hard hammering and hot, iron coals.
The anvil was one of the only tools the blacksmith didn’t make. It was made at a foundry. A foundry was a place where metal is melted at a really high temperatures, and then molded into a shape. The anvil was made out of metal, but the top surface was steel since steel was more durable than iron/metal.
Most of all blacksmiths owned a shop called a smithy, (a blacksmith’s work space). This makes me think that the blacksmith wanted everyone to know where his shop was, so the shops were normally located on the corner where two main roads connected.
Did they have any other jobs?
Yes, the blacksmith did have many other jobs. For example, if someone had a toothache, he would ask his to hold his breath and he would pull it out with his pliers. He was a dentist sometimes!
Another example is if a colonist had a sick or injured dog, the blacksmith would try to save it. They normally only dealt with injured pets though. They were sometimes veterinarians!
Gunsmith
What did a gunsmith do?
The gunsmith made and fixed the town’s guns/firearms. The gunsmith normally fixed firearms, because new weapons were always imported from England. It does sound like they did a lot of work, and did their jobs well, because it seems hard to fix broken firearms, and even to sometimes fix them!
What kind of items did the gunsmith have to know how to use to work their job?
The gunsmith had to be familiar with many materials to be able to work their jobs efficiently. But, the two most important materials that they used are wood and metal. If they couldn’t use those items well, they couldn’t work their jobs well.
What types of tools did a gunsmith use during colonial times?
The gunsmith did end up using some blacksmithing tools. They used a blacksmithing tool such as a forge. They used the forge if in fact they had to melt iron and/or metal for their guns.
Another tool they used was a simply a hammer. They used a hammer to force metal into the correct shape. It sounds like they had to have a lot of strength to be able to force a piece of solid metal with nothing but a hammer.
One last tool a gunsmith would use is called a swage. The swage was used to bend and shape very hot metal.
The gunsmith used many other tools, but the tools I shared with you are very important items that gunsmiths couldn’t do their jobs without.
Farmer
There was one job in colonial times that was very important, and without that occupation the colonists probably couldn’t survive. That job was the farmer.
What did the farmer do?
They did things such as clearing land, planting crops, cutting down trees, installing fences for their land, and sometimes even helped build people’s houses. They also of course took care of animals. As you would think, they also got food from their resources, and sold the food for money.
What types of tools did the farmer use?
Most obviously farmers used many tools, and a lot of them are still used today by people who own a farm, or just need it for their property. One very important tool was the plow. In colonial times they didn’t have metal plows. They had wooden plows. The plow was a tool that you connected to animals such as horses or oxen, and had them pull it through the ground. The point of this was to slice the ground so the farmers could plant. 
Another tool they used was a called a cradle scythe. The cradle scythe could allow the farmer to do more work done, without having to bend over. What the cradle scythe did was gather grain. The way it works was the farmer strongly swung the blade of the cradle scythe towards the stalks of the grain. It would cut through the grain, the farmers would gather the droppings, and then they would continue to cut. It seems as if it was a very useful tool.
Tailor
What was the tailor? 
The tailor was a job that is still around today. What the tailor did was he made custom clothing for both men and women.
Was the tailor very popular?
This is a yes and no answer. No, because in small towns, such as Redding in Connecticut, the colonists didn’t live in a large enough town. So, their families made their clothes instead of buying them.
Yes because large towns like Boston and Salem, were so big that a tailor could really make a living there. It sounds like it could be good, and bad to be a tailor as a full-time job.
Where did the tailor get his supplies?
Tailors most likely never had the supplies to make the desired outfits for his customers. Tailors would almost always get their supplies from another job, the milliner. The milliner was a job that had sold items such as cloth and thread.
Chapter 4- How Did Jobs Come to Be?
Have you ever caught yourself wondering how jobs began while your mother or father rushed out the front door in the morning going to work. Well, in this chapter you will learn about two very important jobs that were a huge resource to the colonists,
Blacksmith
And the smith his iron measures hammered to the anvil’s chime;
Thanking God, whose boundless wisdom makes the flowers of poesy bloom
In the forge’s dust and cinders, in the tissues of the loom.
- Longfellow—Nuremberg. L. 34.
When did blacksmithing begin?
The first blacksmithing began in the Iron Age. The Iron Age was in the 8th century
B.C in Central Europe, and in the 6th century B.C in Northern Europe.
What did the first blacksmiths make?
The first blacksmiths made simple tools such as spears and arrow tips. They had to have charcoal as a primary resource in order for them to be able to use their furnace.
What was the Iron Age?
The Iron Age was when a person realized that a type of rock became iron when heated by the very, very hot coals of a campfire.
Farmer
Probably one of the most important contributions to colonial food was the adoption of Native
American agricultural practice and crops, chiefly corn and tobacco………..-NCpedia
When did farming begin?
Historians believe that the first agriculture, (farming), began at the end of the last Ice Age. So, that would be about 11,700 years ago.
Was farming as important back then as it is today?
That is a yes and no question. Yes, because of course they needed to get their food and their drinks. Today, we also get our food and a lot of our drinks from farms. So yes, farming was as important in colonial times as it is today.
The reason why many say no is that in the BC years, farming wasn’t very important. The most important jobs than were the hunters and gatherers.
How did they come up with the techniques of farming?
Historians believe that they were simply just very observant. They must of realized if you put a seed in the ground it will produce the same plant. They also could have realized that if the soil that they were planting in was by water, the crop would grow healthier.
Conclusion
The colonial period started a foundation for the jobs we have today. As you have probably figured out after reading this book that earning your trade in colonial times was hard. Furthermore, perhaps men and women didn’t work the same kinds of jobs, but they still had to focus on many things to keep their lives and families well. There were many important jobs, and each one had a different purpose, and it all came back to being the foundation for the jobs that we have in America in this day. Is it possible that there were other undiscovered jobs that existed in colonial times that could have changed the America of today?
Glossary
Rural- (roo-hal)- relating to the country, country life, or country people: rustic
Dame School- (daym-skool)- a school where they taught just reading, writing, and arithmetic and taught by a women
Property- (prop-er-tee)- the possession or possessions of a particular owner
Veterinarian- (vet-er-uh-nair-ee-un)- The doctor of an animal
Hammer- (ham-mer)- a tool consisting of a solid head, usually of metal, used for beating metals, driving nails
Occupation- (ok-yuh-pey-shuh-n)- a person's usual work or business
Colonist- (kol-uh-nist)- an inhabitant of a colony.
B.C- (B-C)- Before Christ
Charcoal- (chahr-kohl)- the carbonaceous material obtained by heating wood or other organic substances in the absence of air.
Furnace- (fur-nis)- a structure in which heat may be generated, as for heating houses, smelting ores, or producing steam.
Observant- (uh-b-zur-vuh-nt)- quick to notice
Resource- (ree-sohrs)- a source of supply
Sources:
The Blacksmith
The Blacksmiths
The Scoop on Clothes, Homes, and Daily Life in Colonial America
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https://www.pinterest.com/pin/266627240409745220/
https://groundedparents.com/2016/04/21/endless-summer-2-from-massachusetts-to-rural-new-york-latin-grammar-schools-dame-schools-and-the-two-term-school-year/
