Working Out and Locker Rent

My grandmother used to work out and my Grandpa paid locker rent.

When Grandma worked out in the 1920s and 1930s, it meant she worked for a neighboring family doing household chores, preparing meals, and other related tasks. When my Grandpa Neill paid locker rent in the 1940s it was for rent at a frozen food cooperative where he had freezer space where he and Grandma could store butchered meat and other food items they wanted to preserve by freezing.

Readers of a certain age will already know what these terms mean. Others may not. Any document or record can easily contain a term or phrase whose meaning has changed over time. That chance increases as the genealogy research extends further and further back in time.

Is there a chance that phrase didn’t mean then what it does now?

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