Matthias and Conrad Clovis
Matthias and Conrad Clovis Indentures
I have been searching through Family Searches Images. If you haven't tried this yet and you like to read and look through documents for clues and sometimes answers, you should to try it. The images are arranged by country (in the United States it is arranged by state and county. In the county it can be searched by area (district or town but mostly district / township / parishes ). I had looked at the Research Wiki on the Family Search site and a lot of perhaps all of these files are listed there and I have missed them or perhaps they have been added since I looked at that particular state and county.
When I saw the indenture books posted for Washington County, Maryland I was hoping to find something about John Clovis, Matthias and Conrad's father. He is named in the indenture and signed his mark on them. It seems that he made the decision to indenture his sons and I wonder if they had any choice in what they were going to learn. The indenture would accomplish two things. One, they would learn a trade that would enable them to support themselves and their family when they were old enough to have a family. Second, the person who they were indentured to were responsible for taking care of their needs. Both Matthias and Conrad were indentured in 1794. Matthias was 14 and Conrad 11. I was a little shocked that Conrad was indentured so young and that he would be bound to be an apprentice to Samuel Shade until he was 21. The other thing that surprised me was that Matthias was indentured to become a blacksmith. Matthias was 14 and he had to serve seven and a half years as an apprentice to Phillip ?Spuher?. Every record until now I had seen listed Matthias as a shoemaker. He is taxed as a shoemaker when he lived in Fayette County, Pennsylvania and listed as one in the Greene County, Pennsylvania 1850 census. Now I have all even more questions. Did he finish his apprenticeship as a blacksmith and how did he become a shoemaker? Part of his agreement was that he would not marry until after his apprenticeship was finished which would have been sometime between 1804-1805. He married Nancy Baer/Bare in 1808. Matthias and his family are in the 1810 Fayette County, Pennsylvania census and in the tax list until 1818. He is listed in Monongalia County (West) Virginia in the 1820 and 1830 census and the 1840, 1850 and 1860 Greene County, Pennsylvania census.
I know very little about John Clovis except that he was rumored to have been a Hessian soldier and he is listed in the 1790 & 1800 census in Washington County, Maryland, the Orphans court records of Fayette County, Pennsylvania, and a deed in Lincoln County, North Carolina that lists him as the husband of Susannah Sailor Clovus. I am wondering if he was a shoemaker and that is where Matthias learned the trade. I am searching for answers about John. Is he the same person as Johannes Clobes who deserted from the Hessian army to the Americans in 1777? If he is where is he between November 1777 and the Maryland census in 1790? Is he the John Cloves that lived and paid taxes in Berks County, Pennsylvania?
Conrad's Indenture to Samuel Shade
Matthias' Indenture to Phillip ?Spuher?
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