About the School

After Henry VIII began the suppression of the Catholic Church, a crisis began to emerge in London. The Catholic Church had provided much of the aid for the poor and when the organization began to be repressed, their charitable works dissipated causing a great influx in the number of destitute persons. Henry VIII, shortly before his death, was convinced by his son, Edward VI, to create three hospitals to aid the poor on the sites of building formerly occupied by the Catholic Church. Christ's Hospital was created for the education of poor children, St. Thomas's for the relief of the sick and distressed, and Bridewell, for the correction and amendment of the idle and vagabond (G.A.T Allan, Christ's Hospital, 4-5).

The primary curriculum for the poor boys and girls admitted into the Christ's Hospital included reading, writing and arithmetic. Once the students had finished their educations, they were apprenticed out to ship captains, merchants, plantation owners, and businessmen. As the British Empire began to grow in the eighteenth-century, these apprentices found their way to the remote corners of the world working for their masters.

This project examines the impact these educated individuals of humble beginnings had on the social fabric of the English colonies in North America. By tracing these apprentices across the Atlantic Ocean, we find that these individuals were found in almost every colony. There were those who excelled and became prominent members of the society in which they moved to, and others that have simply disappeared over the centuries.

The Christ's Hospital project begins with the first apprentices traveling to the North American colonies in 1607 and ends with the class that matriculated in 1815. We extended the date past 1783 for the American colonies as we found that apprentices from Christ's Hospital continued coming to what is now the United States, (even during the American Revolution). The year 1815 holds no particular significance to this project other than it is an arbitrary end date that encompasses most of the English occupation of American colonies.

Sources:
G.A.T. Allan, Christ's Hospital (Blackie & Son Limited: London, 1937).
G.A.T. Allan, revised by J.E. Morpurgo, Christ's Hospital (Town County Books: London, 1984).
Edmund Blunded, Christ's Hospital: A Retrospect (Christophers: London, 1923).
Frances M. Page, Christ's Hospital Hertford: A History of the School Against the Background of London and Horsham (G. Bell & Sons Ltd.: London, 1953).
E. H. Pearce, Annals of Christ's Hospital (Hugh Rees, Ltd.: London, 1908).

Project Staff

James P. Whittenburg, Project Director, is a Professor of History at the College of William and Mary.

Wayne Graham, Technical Director, graduated from the Virginia Military Institute in 1995, and received his Masters of Arts degree from the College of William and Mary in 2001. He is currently employed by the Earl Gregg Swem Library at the College of William and Mary in their Library Systems office as an Information Technology Specialist. Wayne has designed the database back end using Microsoft's Access..

Beth Kreydatus, Research Assistant, graduated from Elmira College in 1995, and is currently working on her dissertation in the field of twentieth century women's history at William and Mary. She has been searching for biographical information on the masters and their apprentices residing in New York and Pennsylvania.

Creston Long, Research Assistant, received his Bachelor of Arts from the Virginia Military Institute in 1993, his Masters from Wake Forest. He has recently defended his Ph.D. dissertation and will begin teaching this fall at Salisbury University. Creston has worked on researching the project's apprentices that arrived in Maryland. Lisa Francavilla, Research Assistant, graduated from the University of Colorado in 2001 and received her Masters of Arts in History from the College of William and Mary in 2002. She has worked researching apprentices residing in Virginia.

Melissa Ooten, Research Assistant. Upon coming to the College of William and Mary in 1999 to complete her Master of Arts degree in the Department of History, she initially worked on composing a spreadsheet of the Christ's Hospital data. She is now a Ph.D. candidate in the department, and has most recently worked on researching the Hospital's apprentices who came to Virginia.

Kyle Zelner, Research Assistant, is currently finishing his dissertation, a social history of the militiamen of Essex County, Massachusetts during King Philip's War, 1675-1676. He has extensive experience in the local history and genealogy of New England and social history techniques. He also specialize in Early American military history and the military history of Tudor-Stuart England. He has taught American History at William & Mary and is currently an Adjunct Assistant Professor of History at Thomas Nelson Community College in Hampton, Virginia. Kyle has done some preliminary research on the Christ's Hospital apprentices and their masters in New England.

Timothy P. (Paul) Grady, Research Assistant, received his B.A. from Tennessee Tech University and his M.A. from Virginia Tech. Paul is currently a Ph.D. candidate in early colonial history at the College of William and Mary with research interests in Trans-Atlantic history centered in seventeenth-century Virginia. He has researched apprentices in Virginia and edited the information in the database.

Amber Esplin, Research Assistant, received her B.A. in French from Brigham Young University in 1998 and her M.A. in American History from the College of William and Mary in 2001. She is currently employed as a copy editor for the American Society of Microbiology. Amber worked on transcribing matriculation records from the Math School and researching apprentices in Virginia.

(current as of 8/20/2002)