London Apprenticeship Abstracts 1442-1850

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Records of the Livery Companies of London are one of the greatest archival treasures of the world. Dating from the late medieval period to the present, they provide a mass of information on innumerable subjects. For the family historian, they can provide an immense amount of genealogical and biographical details on members.

The Abstracts provide information from the apprenticeship records of a number of the livery companies selected because the records generally give good genealogical detail, principally, the name, parish and occupation of the apprentice's father. For a given livery company, the abstracts will generally end about 1800 or later, depending on the coverage of the manuscript volume containing that year. In some cases records cease before 1800.

Over 165,000 of these record abstracts are contained in the database, with almost half a million names indexed: apprentices, their parent, and masters. In nearly every case, the father (more rarely the mother) of the apprentice is given, with their place of residence - which can be anywhere in the British Isles or overseas.

In early records, persons who belonged to a given livery company would generally practice the trade to which that Company referred, but after about 1650, it became more and more common (until in some companies virtually universal) that members practised another trade altogether. Searchers, therefore, even if they know the occupation of the subject of interest, may not be able to find the right livery company to search at all easily.

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