Administrative Information

Access Restrictions

Campbell County (Va.) Apprenticeship Indentures, 1844, related to Black and Multiracial individuals are digitized and available through Virginia Untold: The African American Narrative Digital Collection on the Library of Virginia website. Please use digital images.

Use Restrictions

There are no restrictions.

Preferred Citation

Campbell County (Va.) Apprenticeship Indentures, 1844. Local government records collection, Campbell County Court Records. The Library of Virginia, Richmond, Virginia.

Acquisition Information

These records came to the Library of Virginia in a transfer of court papers from Campbell County (Va.) in 2004 under accession number 41336.

Processing Information

Campbell County Apprenticeship Indentures were originally described as part of the Campbell County (Va.) Deeds, 1783-1862, record, but were removed to the present Campbell County (Va.) Apprenticeship Indentures, 1844, record to enhance discoverability in August 2025.

These records, originally filed among Campbell County deeds, were processed, scanned, and indexed by E. Jordan and L. Neuroth for the purposes of digitizing them for the digital project Virginia Untold: The African American Narrative circa 2019.

Encoded by C. Collins: August 2025.

Historical Information

Context for Record Type: In 1765, the General Assembly established that illegitimate children of "woman servants, Negroes, white women by Negroes were to be bound out" until the age of 21 for males and 18 for females. In the late eighteenth century, the General Assembly established the Overseers of the Poor, an appointed body that provided food, clothing, shelter, and medical treatment for people who were too poor to support themselves or too ill to provide for their basic needs. They also bound out children whose parents could not support them and those who were orphaned through apprenticeship contracts. These agreements arranged for white children to be taught a trade or domestic skills as well as educated in reading, writing, and arithmetic. In 1805, the General Assembly amended the previous act to no longer require the master of "black or mulatto orphans" to teach reading, writing, or arithmetic, with the intent that this would prevent Black children from learning these skills.

Locality History: Campbell County was named for William Campbell, a general in the militia during the Revolutionary War and one of the heroes of the Battle of Kings Mountain in 1780. The county was formed from Bedford County by an act passed on 15 December 1781. The county court first met on 7 February 1782. The county seat is Rustburg.

Scope and Content

Campbell County (Va.) Apprenticeship Indentures, 1844, consist of contracts or agreements binding out white, Black, or Multiracial children, sometimes those who were orphaned, to learn a particular trade or craft. These indentures may be written agreements between the family of the apprentice and those responsible for the indentured. In many cases this includes the direct involvement of the Overseers of the Poor. They typically contain the name of the person or institution binding out, the person to whom bound, the name of the person being indentured, the length of the apprenticeship, and the responsibilities of the person taking on the indenture.

Currently, identified material only includes indentures of Black and Multiracial children. Additional apprenticeship indentures concerning white children may be found with other records.

These records are comprised of an indenture, 1844, in which Jim Smith, the son of Lucy Smith, was bound to Robert Strange to learn "the craft and mystery and Occupation of a Farmer."

Arrangement

This collection is arranged

Related Material

See also: Campbell County (Va.) Free and Enslaved Records, 1854-1867

See also: Campbell County (Va.) Deeds, 1783-1862

Records related to free and enslaved people of Campbell County (Va.) and other localities are available through the Virginia Untold: The African American Narrative Digital Collection on the Library of Virginia website.

Additional Campbell County (Va.) Court Records can be found on microfilm at The Library of Virginia web site. Consult "A Guide to Virginia County and City Records on Microfilm."

Adjunct Descriptive Data