GEN-MEDIEVAL-L Archives

Archiver > GEN-MEDIEVAL > 1990-08 > 0651080594


From: Kay Allen AG <>
Subject: Re: Age of competency
Date: Sun, 19 Aug 1990 08:43:14 -0700


R. Leutner wrote:
>
> I think we need to know what the evidence is that he apprenticed himself
> out? Perhaps I missed that detail in the earliest post.

It is a Plymouth Colony Court Record.
>
> I must say I don't recall many instances of adults putting themselves into
> apprenticeships in the 17th c.

I believe that Eugene Stratton FASG (emeritus, I believe) in his book on
the Plymouth Colony does mention some adult apprenticeships. I would
say that it was unusually. This is why my gut is saying he was about
15. And that is why I am trying my assumptions and hypotheses in the
court of opinion of this group.

Perhaps indenturing themselves to pay for
> their passage, but you wouldn't see that happening on this side of the
> water so early as 1634, I don't think. And in either case, 11 years would be
> a rather long period of apprenticeship for an adult and certainly an extra-long
> period of servitude.

Agreed. But it wouldn't be so long, if he was not quite an adult.
>
> But I'm just blabbering!

Well stated blabbering :-)

Kay Allen AG
>
> Bob Leutner
> Iowa City IA

This thread: