Apprenticeship Agreements

[spgordon]

Turns out there's quite a bit of writing about apprenticeship agreements, whether such contracts were enforceable, the "decline" of such agreements, etc. Here are two articles; their data set centers on Montreal, not Pennsylvania or even early America, but the articles are helpful anyway in that they are recent & summarize what others have written on these topics. If interested, read away!

"Enforcement in Apprenticeship Contracts"
https://www.dropbox.com/s/qopk8zb72meu6m2/Decline.pdf?dl=0

"The Decline of Apprenticeship in North America"
https://www.dropbox.com/s/qwndcx8yes11bqq/Enforcement.pdf?dl=0

FWIW, here's the apprenticeship agreements from 1805 that bound Matthew Henry (1790-1862) to a Lititz shopkeeper--so, this agreement occurred within the Moravian church. But, as late as 1805, such agreements were still ordinary practice.



I also found, after much searching, photos I took in 2017 of the "template" for apprenticeship agreements that the Moravians used. They're worth reading. One of the articles above notes that "In the United States and English Canada, very few early apprenticeship contracts still exist"--but many such contracts survive in Moravian archives. I wonder what studying those would show?

[T*O*F]

Would the first one have been a standardized form that was printed on a printing press.  I know the typewriter wasn't invented yet.

[spgordon]

Yes, a printed form. Printed forms for lots of legal transactions--including summons to court, say--were available in Philadelphia and elsewhere by the 1760s.

I don't know, though, whether this was a "standard" indenture agreement or one that the Moravian church had printed & used for its purposes. I'm pretty sure it is a standard indenture agreement.

[heinz]

Very interesting, thanks for posting.

[VP]

Scott,

What is the difference between an alehouse and a tavern? Also, judging by the number of gunsmiths that married their master's daughter I would say the part about fornication wasn't always obeyed. Of course, the marriage always took place after the apprenticeship from my studies

VP

[spgordon]

 

I don't know for sure--and doubt the terms were always used carefully--but I would guess that an alehouse was a place to drink, whereas a tavern was a place to drink, eat, and lodge.

Agreed regarding the fornication rules! Even in Moravian communities, where people were under constant scrutiny in ways that would be intolerable to us today, William Henry Jr. had sex with a girl when he was a teenager. But that got him transferred from Lititz to the all-male Christian's Spring, so I guess we should be glad for his disobedience!