Apprentices

Apprenticeship was the first of three stages in the education of a skilled craftsman or woman. Apprenticeship began when a child reached the age of 13 or 14 and was ready to prepare for adult life. Typically, a child’s father negotiated a contract or indenture with a master artisan (usually a male) who agreed to take the child into his home, teach the child the “art and mysteries of the trade,” and provide a rudimentary education in practical mathematics and accounting. Families seeking to place their children in the more lucrative crafts, such as instrument-making or silver-smithing, were usually required to pay masters an entry fee as part of the apprenticeship agreement. In poorer crafts, such as shoemaking and tailoring, little or no entry fee was required. As poverty rose in colonial America, especially in urban areas, magistrates and overseers of the poor increasingly used apprenticeship indentures to lower the cost of poor relief and to provide destitute children with a minimal livelihood so that they would become taxpaying adults.

The apprenticeship period lasted about seven years, with the first year or two occupied performing the laborious, unskilled tasks of lifting, hauling, cleaning, and errandrunning for the master and his household. Having proved their loyalty and commitment to the trade in this fashion, at the age of 15 or 16 the apprentice began to learn the rudiments of their craft. By the time the apprentice reached their late teens or early twenties, they had acquired basic skills and were ready to embark on the second stage of craft education as journeymen.

Further reading: Ronald Schultz, The Republic of Labor: Rhiladelphia Artisans and the Politics of Class, 1720-1830 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1993).

—Ronald Schultz