Who are you looking for?
Did your ancestor serve an apprenticeship in Devon? Within these borough records, you can discover your ancestor’s address, parent’s names, master’s name and date of indenture.
For each record, you will find an image of the original document and a transcript of the vital information. The information in each transcript can vary depending on the age and condition of the record, but most will include the following details.
Images
The images will often reveal additional details about your ancestor. Below we have listed the different event types and the additional details you may find.
The Poor Law Acts of 1597 gave the parish churchwardens and overseers of the poor the responsibility of looking after the welfare of all pauper children and poor families within their parish or borough. To assist with the maintenance of pauper children, churchwardens and overseers facilitated parish or borough apprenticeships. After 1801, the overseer of the poor was ordered to keep apprenticeship records. However, even before this law, many kept detailed records, which is how this collection dates back to 1570. The changes to the law in 1801 meant that record keeping became more formalised and had a standard printed style which often included parents’ names.
Children would be apprenticed to local people and the borough would pay the apprentice fees. The child’s new master was responsible for the child’s welfare and was obligated to provide food, clothing, and lodging and to teach the child a trade. Trades could include butchery, tailoring, and tanning, but some pauper children were apprenticed to learn housewifery or husbandry on farms. In larger estates, landlords could assign apprentices to their tenants. Children as young as 7 could be bound to a master and usually stayed within an apprenticeship until they were 21 or, in the case of female apprentices, until they were married.
Many apprentices were used as a servant in a house and not all masters honoured their commitment to feed, clothe, house and teach their charges. In these unfortunate cases, many apprentices left their assigned homes. Court records show cases of apprentice mistreatment and the newspapers reported runaway apprentices. This was not the situation for all apprentices; for others, they became a valuable member of their host families and learned a trade for their future.
Take a look at these other related record sets suggested by Findmypast’s genealogy experts.