www.findmypast.com
www.findmypast.com
Bi-Weekly Tip of the Week By Mary Moore
Apprenticeship Records
What is an Apprentice?
“An apprentice is a person bound by legal agreement to work for another for a specific amount of time in return for instruction in a trade, art, or business.” (American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fifth Edition. Copyright © 2016 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.)
Apprenticeship Records are Valuable for Genealogy Purposes, Because:
- they were signed by the apprentice’s parent or guardian.
- most apprentices were teenage boys obligated to work at their trade until age 21.
- the length of an apprenticeship can be used to estimate an apprenticed ancestor’s age by subtracting the number of years from 21.
Family Tree Magazine, January 2015, offered the following suggestions for the use of Apprenticeship Records:
- Look for these records in the census - not living with parents.
- Do a Google search for these valuable records for both apprentice and master by entering “apprenticeship records” in the Google search box.
- Remember, this doesn’t apply just to the United States, but to many other countries all over the world.
- An excellent article on this subject can be found in findmypast at https://www.findmypast.com/blog/family-records/how-to-find-out-more-about-your-ancestors-using-apprentice-records
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