Mary and all, The court minutes of 22 Apr 1794, sent by George, may not have given you the information you were seeking, but it does help to narrow down the death date for the father of John HARGE/HARKEY. (For newcomers to the list, this orphaned John HARGE married (13 Jan 1811) Sarah WALCHER. They removed to Montgomery Co. IL abt 1830. According to information provided by his descendant, Nancy Broersma, the parents of this orphaned John were John HARKEY and Elizabeth DOUB. One problem for the HARKEY list has been to identify which John HARKEY is the orphaned John's father. We have eliminated John the son of Martin the Elder as a possibility, since he wrote his will in 1821.) Since John HARGE was referred to as an orphan in April 1794, his father must have died before then--that is, earlier than the "abt 1796" we have been using. I don't know anything about the laws regarding apprenticeship, but the apprenticeship date is interesting, in that orphaned John's birth date is given (in Nancy's information) as 4 Apr 1789. It looks as if a child had to be five years old before he could be apprenticed out, and young John was apprenticed out at the earliest possible date. Alma Roark Johnson [email protected]