Apprenticeship Q

[Merry]

Nothing to add to BK6 from this thread

How common would it be to have three sons apprenticed out in the 1770s, one in Wellingborough, Northamptonshire, one in Dover, Kent and the third one at St Marylebone, Middlesex?

Sadly, I don't know where they came from.

[Uncle John]

The locations suggest 3 completely different trades.

[Merry]

Wellingborough - cooper
Dover - cordwainer
St >Marylebone - tinplate manufacturer

[Mary from Italy]

Maybe not impossible if the father was in the army or something, and moved around a lot. Otherwise it seems unlikely.

[Merry]

Mary - Are you psychic?? :eek: lol

Father was in the army, BUT the money to get the boys their apprenticeship was conditional upon their mother not living with their father. Maybe ther father paid for the apprenticeships himself? He was a sergent in a foot regiment. I don't know if he would have earned enough?

[Uncle John]

Have you definitely assigned the three sons to the same family? The trades have nothing in common at all.

[Merry]

The tin plate manufacturer is 100% the right family. The other two have the right names and the dates are good for them turning 14 (I only have a seven year window of opportunity for their births). I haven't come across anyone else in the country with the same names at the right time.

Aren't Kent and Northants places not well covered by online records if they chose to stay in those places? I think the Dover one died young, and the Wellingborough one went to sea/abroad eventually. In 1795 he was "across the seas".

[Olde Crone]

Hmmm. I have families where all the sons are apprenticed to the same trade (and the same master).

I have other families where the sons are apprenticed to wildly different trades and are geographically far flung from home...but in one or two cases at least, they have been apprenticed to a relative of some sort, who just happens to live 300 miles away

So - I would say it is possible.

OC

[Merry]

Thanks OC.

The mother of the three boys was born and married in Bedfordshire to a man who was probably from somewhere else and he died in Dorset. I just don't know where the children were born or when and where two of them died and if those two married or had children or not, so still a long way to go!

[Mary from Italy]

Nothing about the children on his army records?

[Merry]

No one can find his army record. Name Robert McCrery :o He was a sergent in the 14th foot in 1759 (when he married) and by his death in 1793 he was a Lieutenant in the same regiment. In his will he left nothing to his wife but said she could apply to the army for a pension! I have found nothing on her (Susannah nee Maynard) later than her marriage. Her father left her money on condition she left her husband.