Was a house man = Hausmann. This means he owned a farm. Up until the 19th century there were several distinctions made for persons who were farming. This usually had to do with the fact on whether they owned or rented their house, if they owned land and if so how much land they had. Many of the small farmers just had their house and a small plot of land like a small vegetable garden or to have a cow on the land. Not big enough to feed the family, so they usually had another job, too.

A linen weaver, however, was somewhat wealthy and so he owned a good size of land and actually probably could have fed his family just by running his farm.