Many thanks to you all for this very enlightening little exchange.  I was
just writing on this subject, and it had never really occurred to me to ask
"How young?"  Thanks for filling this lacuna.

-- Stephan

on 2/25/02 11:14 AM, Mary L. Miller at [log in to unmask] wrote:

> I have a book "Barren County Kentucky Deeds 1798-18l3 p. 97 says:
>
> Apprenticeship 18 Apr 1808 by William Logan (Clerk of Barren    County)
> binding Catharine Glover age 18 months (daughter of     Mary Glover) to
> William Hall until she is 16 to learn the       art or business of
> housekeeping and reading and writing.
>
> Signed: William Hall, and acknowledged and received 18 April
> 1808 by William Hall.  signed W. Logan.
>
> I couldn't believe it myself when I read it.  Mary Miller
>
>
> Jim Watkinson wrote:
>>
>> Children could be indentured at almost any age, tho' I've never seen an
>> infant indured.  Indeed, 5 is the youngest I've seen.
>>
>> And, no, indenture was NOT a form of adoption.  One was indented to serve
>> one's master until one reached the age of majority or served the time
>> specified in the indenture.  Most indentures for boys provided for
>> education: reading, writing, and "cyphering to the rule of three."  Girls
>> did not get the math; blacks got nothing.  At the end, indentured servants
>> generally were owed "freedom dues," i.e. money and a suit of clothes.  This
>> applied to free blacks as well.  Indentured servants had little more rights
>> than slaves in colonial and early republic America.
>>
>> Jim Watkinson
>>
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