My apologies again for forgetting the list!!!!! Kind Regards Roy LD Cox WEB: www.coxresearcher.com/index.htm Member of the Somerset Archealogical & Natural History Society No. 1066 (And All That!) http://www.sanhs.org -----Original Message----- From: Roy [mailto:[email protected]] Sent: 16 February 2007 10:57 To: 'Robert Hillier' Subject: RE: [OEL] Widow and spinster Good Morning - Apprenticeships: The contract of apprenticeship is made by deed only (hence the usual expression of an apprentice's indenture), whereby one person is bound to teach another a trade or calling, and the latter is bound to learn it and to serve as an apprentice for the term of the indenture. (Yes I know - we all know this but I copy it for reference - Master & Servant in Halsbury's Laws of England and Stone's Justices Manual) It seems to me that the Master here is the estate to which the apprentice is being bound and the teachers are those employed by that estate/master. Similarly where one is bound to an employer, that employer would not necessarily teach but would instruct one of his employees, skilled in that particular trade, to do so. I can find no legal precedence or note to this situation and it seems also not to need it. The estate/master in this instance is the employer. Spinster: Originally used simply of a woman who spun wool or linen for a living; only in the 18th century did the word come to denote an unmarried woman. An interesting evolution but probably one, of which we will never quite get the true connection? Some PR entries refer to some women when they are widows, also as spinsters, which means of course, her calling is spinster but her husband has died. Kind Regards Roy LD Cox WEB: www.coxresearcher.com/index.htm Member of the Somerset Archealogical & Natural History Society No. 1066 (And All That!) http://www.sanhs.org -----Original Message----- From: [email protected] [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Robert Hillier Sent: 15 February 2007 23:18 To: [email protected] Subject: Re: [OEL] Widow and spinster Thanks very much for those OED entries Liz , so my parish register isn't a one-off . However , since the quoted items don't provide corroborating evidence , I would argue that one still doesn't know the significance of adding "spinster" to the woman's label in these cases - they're consistent with an indication of unmarried , but surely that is just not necessary since " Mrs BLOGGS , widow" can only refer to a woman without a living husband , so why add "spinster" ? Thanks again, Robert Hillier, Poole ==================================== WEB PAGE: http://homepages.rootsweb.com/~oel/ ARCHIVES: http://archiver.rootsweb.com/th/index?list=OLD-ENGLISH ------------------------------- To unsubscribe from the list, please send an email to [email protected] with the word 'unsubscribe' without the quotes in the subject and the body of the message