If The Shoe Fits

I just tracked a Carr family back through the England Census from 1901 to 1841 in response to an email query. They were mostly boot makers and shoemakers. When I got back to the 1841 England Census (by subscription), I couldn't make out the occupation listed for the patriarch, James Carr. His job title looked sort of like the word container but it started instead with cord. What could it be?

I went to Wikipedia, of course. I took what I was relatively sure of and used an asterisk to represent the parts I couldn't make out. The asterisk, as in many software programs, will serve as a wild card or place saver. My search for cord*ainer pointed me right away to what I needed. A cordwainer is a shoemaker. The term goes back to the 13th century and led to the formation of the Worshipful Company of Cordwainers two centuries later. These artesans often worked in Cordovan soft leather, thus the name. The English eventually stopped distinguishing between shoe repairmen and shoe makers, so terms like cobbler and cordwainer disappeared.

So when you're stuck in your research because you can't make out a terminology or a name, remember that you can use an asterisk in Wiki to represent the section you can't make out. Like Bedf*shire will point you to Bedfordshire, Bar*illai will give you a list of people with the first name Barzillai, and *ama bin laden will find the notorious Osama bin Laden. (Someone needs to find him, that's for sure. Might as well be you.)

The image of the cordwainer above was found at the Honorable Cordwainers Company website, which provides a formal definition and more information.