More great websites
A useful place to potentially track down regional resources is UK GDL, which has online projects relating to occupations ( www. ukgdl.org.uk/category/ occupations). This leads to both obscure and well-known sites such as Ann Spiro’s Blacksmiths Index ( blacksmiths.my genwebs.com). Another great source is Genuki, which has specifically transcribed articles relating to ‘Absconding Apprentices’ from Trewman’s Exeter Flying Post ( genuki.cs. ncl.ac.uk/ DEV/ DevonMisc/ ParishApprentices.html). The first example is transcribed from an issue dated 2 January 1800: “Run away from his master, Mr Amos Govier, blacksmith, of Topsham, Edmund Chowne, his apprentice; he is about 5 feet 6 inches and half high, and nearly 20 year of age, brown hair, long nose, long-favoured, rather pock-ridden.”
TheGenealogist has Apprenticeship and Master Records, 1710-1811 – the registers kept by the Board of Stamps extracted from TNA series IR 1. There’s also this article ( thegenealogist. co.uk/featuredarticles/ 2013/over- one- million-apprentice ship- records-1) which gives you a run- down of the documents and what you can learn. Ancestry ( ancestry.co.uk) has data extracted from IR 1, plus a collection of West Yorkshire apprenticeship records (1627-1894), and men indentured to merchant navy ships from 1824-1910.
The National Records of Scotland’s Crafts and Trades guide ( www.nrscotland.gov.uk/research/guides/crafts-andtrades) has details of some apprenticeship material (such as Edinburgh indentures 1613-1783), and your local archive may have an online guide to its holdings (such as this example from Devon: www.devon.gov.uk/apprenticeship_ records). Some may have catalogued or indexed their collections too. Worcestershire’s Indexes and Guides page ( www.worcestershire.gov.uk/ info/20189/search_our_ records/ 321/indexes_ and_guides) includes a PDF index and introduction to its indentures.
The Bristol & Avon Family History Society has produced Bristol Apprenticeship Books – Index and Transcripts 1724-2009 on CD ( www.bafhs.org.uk/research- room/ 30- copy/projects/ 366bristol-apprentice- books). Staffordshire Names Indexes ( staffsnameindexes.org.uk) has a collection of Staffordshire apprentices from 1600-1900, and via Genuki you can track down the likes of this collection of Bedfordshire Apprentices ( genuki .org.uk/ files/eng/ BDF/ Misc/ Occupations/ BedsApprentices.html). The FamilySearch wiki on the subject of English apprentices is at family search.org/wiki/en/ Apprenticeship_ in_ England.