New Exhibit Opening

The new exhibit, Orphan to Apprentice: Child Indentures as Social Welfare, will open at the Museum of Early Trades & Crafts on Tuesday, September 11^th during Regular Museum Hours.

The Orphan to Apprentice: Child Indentures as Social Welfare exhibit focuses on the practice of government officials binding out or apprenticing orphans and pauper children from the colonial period through the nineteenth century. 

During the eighteenth century and through the mid nineteenth century children considered orphans (any child whose father was deceased) or whose living circumstances were deemed unfit by the state, might be taken from their homes and bound out or indentured by the local Orphan’s Court.  While modern audiences often see this practice as barbaric, early contemporary critics considered it a beneficial form of social welfare that helped both the child and state.  The system of binding out had both successes and failures which will be explored in-depth through the lives of real orphan apprentices of that time period. 

Accompanying the exhibit will be a series of lectures that focus on the system of binding out and how it was used by different social and political movements.  There will also be a series of educational programs available that explore orphans and child labors in American literature, and monthly curator’s tours each focused on a different aspect of the story of binding-out.

For more information visit our website at www.metc.org or call 973-377-2982.  Regular Admission.

  This exhibit was made possible by a grant from the New Jersey Council for the Humanities, a state partner of the National Endowment for the Humanities.  Any views, findings, conclusions or recommendations in this exhibit do not necessarily represent those of the National Endowment for the Humanities or the New Jersey Council for the Humanities.