The employe’s[sic] record card was from the early 20th century. The spelling of employee was not one I was used to. Before I assumed it was wrong, I did some looking because the longer I research, the more I realize that I was not alive 100 years ago and there are many things that happened before my lifetime of which I am unaware.
The use of “employe” is one of them.
For spellings, a dictionary should be my first stop. It was not. In this case, I looked at digital images of contemporary newspapers and published books for references to employee spelled with only one “e” at the end. There were many and more than enough to indicate the usage was not unusual during the very early 20th century and earlier. Searching newspapers and books printed during the time the time you’ve found some unknown to you word or phrase is one of the best ways to learn more about that word or phrase.
I can do some more digging into contemporary and modern dictionaries to see if I can learn some more history of the word, but for now my searches of newspapers and books published during the same time period has confirmed the usage andy my curiousity.
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