Olde Tyme Iowa: The Jobs Your Great-Grandparents Had

Iowa is most definitely an agricultural state. Our old slogan was even, "Fields of Opportunity", which changed recently to "Freedom to Flourish".

Today we'll take a look back 150+ years ago to 1870. Ahh, the good ol' days, right? 1870 in Iowa was a wildly different time. The state was still in its 20s, established in 1846. There wasn't heating or cooling like we have today and no 40-hour work weeks.

Iowa Jobs 150 Years Ago

What was the average Iowan doing in the early 1870s? From gigs that no one does today like, marble and stone cutting to tinners (what is that?), many of the jobs below do still exist, but boy were they different in the 1870s...

Photo by Joanna Kosinska on Unsplash

We'll examine the top 50 jobs hard workin' Iowans were doing 150 years ago below.

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This list was compiled by Slacker and can be attributed to the 1870 census. Like we get periodically these days, the census was a great tool for understanding life, as a snapshot, during different periods in US history.

Are you ready to dig into what jobs our great-grandparents held in Iowa? First, a little history... 1870 was a rebuilding time for the country. The Civil War had recently ended, and Lincoln had been assassinated 5 years earlier. Ulysses S. Grant, the hero General of the Civil War was now U.S. President, just starting the first of his two-terms in office.

Now that you're caught up, let's dive into jobs Iowans held back in the day!