Finding apprenticeship records for ancestral trades

Why apprenticeship records matter

Most family historians hit the same wall sooner or later: a baptism in the 1780s, a marriage in the 1810s, and thirty blank years in between. Apprenticeship records are one of the most rewarding ways through that gap. Between the ages of roughly fourteen and twenty-one, a large proportion of English and Welsh children were bound to a master for a term of years, and the paperwork this generated has a habit of surviving in places ordinary parish registers never reached.

An indenture can name a teenager you had almost given up on, reveal the trade he learned, identify the master who taught him, and sometimes name the father who could not support him. Because binding a child also fixed their legal settlement, parishes took apprenticeships very seriously indeed — and parish officials wrote things down.

The different kinds of apprenticeship

It helps to know which sort of record you are hoping to find, because they survive in different places and were created for different reasons.

• Private apprenticeships — arranged between a family and a master, often accompanied by a premium. The indenture was a private contract, kept by the two parties and only surviving by luck or deposit.
• Parish apprenticeships — poor children bound out by overseers of the poor, sometimes at a distance from home, with the parish paying the premium. These generated vestry minutes, overseers' accounts and settlement papers.
• Charity and school apprenticeships — trusts and endowed schools placing children in trades, recorded in charity minute books.
• Borough and guild apprenticeships — in corporate towns, binding to a freeman was the route to trading rights, and registers of freemen often note apprenticeship.

Girls appear far more often than people expect, usually in housewifery, spinning, mantua-making or domestic service, though the terms were often shorter and the paperwork thinner.

What an indenture actually tells you

The wording is formulaic, but every clause carries information. A typical eighteenth-century indenture records the date, the apprentice's name, the father's name and parish, the master's name, trade and parish, the term (usually seven years, ending at twenty-one or twenty-four), and any premium paid.

• The covenants — the apprentice promised obedience, secrecy, chastity, and not to marry, gamble, frequent taverns or absent himself by day or night.
• The master's obligations — to teach the trade, and to provide meat, drink, clothing, lodging and washing, sometimes with specific sums payable at the end of the term.
• The trade itself — specific enough to distinguish a cordwainer from a cobbler, or a whitesmith from a blacksmith.

Read the trade carefully. A "husbandman" master tells you the apprenticeship was practical rather than commercial, and that your ancestor probably stayed on the land in all but name. A London trade, by contrast, may explain a later move across the country.

The stamp duty registers: the great substitute

From 1710, indentures with a premium were liable to stamp duty, and registers of these duties were kept centrally. They cover roughly 1710 to 1811 and are held at the national archive at Kew in record series IR 1, with surname indexes available in many record offices and online. Each entry is brief but gold: apprentice's name, master's name, trade, parish, date of binding, and the amount of duty paid — which itself hints at the size of the premium.

These registers are especially valuable because the original indentures were private documents that mostly have not survived. If your ancestor was apprenticed in a town and the family could afford a premium, there is a good chance the stamp registers will name him even when nothing else does.

Parish, borough and charity records

For poorer families, look to the parish chest. Overseers' accounts, vestry minutes and settlement examinations frequently mention binding, and from 1816 parishes were required to keep registers of their poor apprentices, some of which run until the New Poor Law of 1834. After that date, Poor Law unions bound children — sometimes hundreds at a time — to northern mill owners, and union minute books record the arrangements.

Borough archives hold freemen's rolls and apprenticeship registers; livery company records survive for many City trades; county record offices hold charity and school collections, often catalogued under the trust's name rather than the child's. Local family history societies have indexed some of these trades by surname, and their volumes are worth checking before you travel.

Practical tips for a search

• Establish the likely age. In most trades binding began at fourteen, so work backwards from a known baptism or marriage.
• Check the settlement angle. If ancestors moved parishes, an apprenticeship is a strong candidate for why — look for removal orders and examinations naming a master.
• Search by trade as well as surname. Indexes are often arranged by county and trade.
• Expect more than one binding. Masters died, trades failed, and apprentices ran away; some children were bound two or three times.
• Note the end of the term. A young man appearing as a journeyman or setting up on his own account a year or two after the term expired is a pleasing confirmation that you have the right person.

Found together, an indenture, a stamp duty entry and a settlement examination can give you a teenage ancestor with a trade in his hands, a master's name, and a parish that had reluctantly agreed to pay — a whole chapter of social history where you expected only a blank page.