1. Provision Merchant- Buyer and seller of general groceries. 2. Independant - Has private income / means on which they life. 3 . House proprietor- House owner and in this case it is likely a business was run from the house eg lodging etc. There is a list of old occupations on Scotlandspeople. It does not cover all occupatiions but quite a few are there. Regards Karen The Good You Do Comes Back To You. --- On Fri, 15/1/10, Schani Biermann <ussenterprise1701@accesscomm.ca> wrote: From: Schani Biermann <ussenterprise1701@accesscomm.ca> Subject: [ABERDEEN] Occupation help To: aberdeen@rootsweb.com Date: Friday, 15 January, 2010, 17:33 on census returns (mainly 1841/1851) there is recorded, under occupation   1.. the phrase "Provision Merchant"   2.. the word "Independant"   3.. the phrase "House proprietor" = landlord? Re #2 i figured it meant that the person, especially as applied to a female = "WIDOW or/and a single person, living by "her own means". Of course ", on 1841 census relationships not noted Re #1?. I have a lady, Helen Garden, living on College Street, in Deeside by herself whose occupation was noted as "Provision Merchant Schani Biermann ------------------------------- To unsubscribe from the list, please send an email to ABERDEEN-request@rootsweb.com with the word 'unsubscribe' without the quotes in the subject and the body of the message

genegenie2005-gen@yahoo.co.uk wrote: > > 3 . House proprietor- House owner and in this case it is likely a > business was run from the house eg lodging etc. I presume the original query concerned information from Census entries? If so, bear in mind that the relevant column asks for "Rank, Profession or Occupation". It is possible that the entry "House Proprietor" was intended, not as an "occupation" but as a "rank". In times past, it was unusual for people to own their own houses, rather than renting them, and in the 19th century it is not uncommon to come across one of the rare house owners using this as a sort of badge of status. In the "planned village" of New Pitsligo, for example, one of the come-ons given to attract people to settle there was the opportunity to own their "feu". The "feu" is the piece of land on which the house is built, and this, rather than the actual stone and mortar, is what until very recently, changed hands when a house was sold. Possession of one's own feu was not by any stretch something you could make much money out of, but in the Kirkyard of New Pitsligo, you will find numerous persons described, not by their trade, as "shoemaker" or "merchant" or "blacksmith", but by what they saw as their elevated rank, as "feuar". Gavin Bell