Definition
A person bound by law to serve a master for a fixed term of years in exchange for instruction in a trade, craft, or occupation. The relationship was typically formalized by indenture — a written contract executed between the apprentice (or the apprentice's parent or guardian, if a minor) and the master — and carried enforceable legal obligations on both sides. The master owed the apprentice instruction, maintenance, and sometimes wages; the apprentice owed service, obedience, and fidelity for the duration of the term.
Historically, apprentices were classified as a species of servant at common law, occupying a distinct legal status that gave courts and poor-law authorities jurisdiction over the relationship. Most apprentices were minors, though the status was not restricted by age in every jurisdiction.
The term carried a secondary legal meaning: in early English law, "apprentice en la ley" (also spelled apprentice en la loi) referred to a student or junior member of the bar — a barrister of fewer than sixteen years' standing — who had not yet been called to the rank of serjeant. In the reign of Edward IV, such persons were sometimes called apprenticii ad barras. This usage is entirely obsolete and survives only in historical sources.
Common Language
Modern common usage (Wiktionary): A trainee, especially in a skilled trade; more loosely, someone not yet expert in a subject.
Historical common usage (Webster's 1913): One bound by indentures or legal agreement to serve a mechanic or other person for a certain time, with a view to learn a trade or art; also, loosely, a novice or tyro.
The common and legal meanings overlap substantially, but the legal definition carries weight the common usage does not: formal execution of indentures, enforceability of the relationship in courts of law, jurisdiction of poor-law or juvenile authorities over pauper apprentices, and the master's affirmative legal duties. Modern everyday usage of "apprentice" implies no legal obligations whatsoever.
Common Confusion
Do not conflate apprentice with employee or servant in historical legal research. Though Blackstone and Kent classify the apprentice as a species of servant, the relationship was governed by indenture law and specific apprenticeship statutes, not by ordinary master-and-servant doctrine. Rights and remedies available to an apprentice — and to a master seeking to enforce an indenture — operated under a separate legal framework. In modern labor law, apprentices may be employees for wage-and-hour purposes, but this classification is a statutory creation distinct from the common-law status.
Why It Matters in Research
Historical sources treat apprenticeship as a formal legal institution that largely dissolved during the nineteenth century. Researchers in pre-Civil War American law will encounter apprenticeship primarily in three contexts: poor-law records (pauper apprenticeship, where overseers of the poor bound out indigent children), trade-indenture disputes litigated in state courts, and early labor regulation statutes. Each context produces different source types and different legal standards.
The obsolete "apprentice en la ley" meaning creates a terminology trap in medieval and early modern English legal sources. A reference to an "apprentice" in a Year Book or sixteenth-century legal text may refer to a barrister-in-training rather than a tradesperson's bound servant. Researchers using Bouvier or Black's first edition should note that both flag this distinction but do not exhaustively describe the bar-apprentice system.
Jurisdictional variation is significant for the nineteenth-century American corpus. Several states enacted specific apprenticeship statutes modifying the common-law rules on indenture duration, parental consent, and remedies for breach. Rapalje & Lawrence explicitly cautions that American statutes varied and that state-specific sources must be consulted. Florida cases, for example, addressed the status of pilots under apprenticeship statutes — a specialized application absent from general treatise treatment.
Post-Civil War, the apprenticeship system was fundamentally altered by the Thirteenth Amendment's prohibition on involuntary servitude. Southern states' use of pauper apprenticeship statutes to bind out formerly enslaved children was litigated extensively in Reconstruction-era courts. Researchers in this period should approach apprenticeship records with awareness that courts were actively contesting whether the institution survived constitutional transformation.
In modern law, "apprenticeship" appears primarily in labor and workforce-development statutes. Federal and state registered apprenticeship programs (governed in part by the National Apprenticeship Act of 1937) use the term in a regulatory rather than common-law sense. The connection to indenture has been entirely severed.
Historical Dictionary Support
The historical dictionaries are in close agreement on the core definition: a person bound by indenture to serve a master for a term of years in exchange for instruction. Black's (both editions), Bouvier, Burrill, and Anderson all converge on this formulation, drawing on Blackstone's Commentaries (1 Bl. Com. 426) and Kent's Commentaries (2 Kent, Comm. 211) as primary authorities.
Burrill adds useful texture, describing the apprentice explicitly as "a species of servant, usually an infant" and emphasizing the bilateral nature of the exchange — services for instruction. Anderson notes the verbal use of "apprentice" (to apprentice someone) and quotes a formulation emphasizing the tradesman's covenant to teach.
Bouvier is the most historically attentive, preserving the "apprentice en la ley" usage and noting the Edward IV-era variant "apprenticii ad barras." This detail is absent from Anderson and underemphasized in Black's first edition, making Bouvier the most useful starting point for researchers working in early English legal history.
None of the historical dictionaries adequately address the Reconstruction-era constitutional disruption of apprenticeship law or the emergence of modern statutory apprenticeship frameworks — an expected gap given their publication dates, but one that researchers must bridge using other sources.
Jurisdictional Note
American apprenticeship law was never uniform. State statutes governed indenture formalities, age requirements, parental or guardian consent, and available remedies, producing significant variation across jurisdictions. The common-law framework drawn from Blackstone and Kent served as a baseline, but in many states it was substantially modified or superseded by legislation. Modern apprenticeship programs are primarily governed by state and federal workforce statutes and bear little structural resemblance to the historical indenture system.