52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks: Week 10 - Translation

 It’s Week 10 of the 52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks challenge. The prompt this week is “Translation”.
Most of the ancestors on father’s side of the family tree came spoke German. Most of my mother’s ancestors spoke Italian. Now throw in a little Dutch, a little Latin, and a little Slavic. I’ve gotten very good at asking for translation help! I’ve even gotten pretty good at translating a basic vital record from German or Italian to English! The hardest part isn’t translating one language into another; it is reading the handwriting!
But sometimes it is even harder to interpret a document that is written in English, my native language. Words written 100 years ago didn’t mean then what they mean today. And sometimes those words are obscure. One example is figuring out what people did for a living. Sometimes it is are. Many of my ancestors listed their occupation as ‘farmer’ or ‘laborer’. Other times it is not so easy. What is a ‘roller tender’. The death certificate of my great-uncle Harry Kolk lists his occupation as ‘roller tender’ in a flour mill. Googling has taught me that flour can be made by a rolling process, where the grain is crushed between rollers. And apparently someone had to tend to those rollers to make sure everything was proceeding as it should.
Many of my Ohio ancestors were involved in the pottery industry.

• The death certificate for William Anthony Brown lists his occupation as ‘Batterout’ for a china company.
• The 1920 census lists Eddie DeBee as a ‘Mold Runner’ in a pottery factory.
• James A DeBee was listed as a “Batter Out’ and later as a ‘Jiggerman’ in various censuses.
• Louis H DeBee was also a ‘Jiggerman’.
• I feel like I’m reading a foreign language. I need a ‘Pottery-to-English’ dictionary similar to the ‘German-to-English’ dictionary I used in high school!

Luckily for me—I found one! Or at least a good substitute. The Pottery Jobs Index. This is actually a site about pottery in England, but I’m assuming the job titles were the same in Ohio.