What does 'cottager' in the 1841 census signify?

[Andrew Tarr]

Usually a cottager was an agricultural labourer who lived in a cottage that was probably owned by a farmer or landowner - they usually did not have much (if any) land of their own.

I think an earlier, perhaps medieval term, was Cottar ?

My wife has an ancestor from a farming family in southern Northumberland ; the children appeared at about 18-monthly intervals, each time in a different farm in Shotley parish.

[MollyC]

The folk who moved around were provided with a tied cottage on a yearly basis, usually from autumn, when some might go to hiring fairs to find a new master and move a greater distance.  If they had their own cottage they would be more inclined to stay in one parish.

I would look at your cottager's position in the village landscape: on the main street, edge of the village or somewhere else.  Some cottage properties have irregular shaped boundaries which were literally encroachments on commons that were permitted in earlier times.  They are less likely in the "Midlands Trangle", Lincolnshire is marginal to this.  There were some good parish studies of enclosure in Lincolnshire published perhaps 40 years ago which may show examples.  Ask your local studies library.

[BillyF]

This resonates with me as I have ancestor who was an ag lab in Lincolnshire in 1841. His stepmother was a cottager and the head of the household. In 1851 she is lsited as a widower, but the stepson becomes a farm labourer.

This family had been in the same village since the 1600s.

[David Outner]

In mid-nineteenth century Lincolnshire "cottager" typically meant a very small farmer whose holding (whether owned or rented) was too small to constitute a full-time job for an able-bodied man and who therefore also worked as an employee for someone else.  Generally, but not invariably, the side job was as a farm labourer. 

You can find a detailed article on this subject in the Interest Groups/Local History/Features section of the website of the Society for Lincolnshire History and Archaeology.

The meaning of the term varied greatly according to time and place; so dictionaries cannot be relied on. 

[BillyF]

This family stayed in the same village until the late 1800s, living in and working on the same estate.

[Top-of-the-hill]

  As far as I remember I haven't come across the term "cottager" in my own Kent research. Like BillyF, my people mainly stayed put in the same village once they married. I have just been working on the local newpapers here (1839 today) and the report about the Agricultural show prizes includes lists of men being awarded sums of money for having worked for the same employer or his predecessors for 50 years.