Some parishes also kept records of parish apprentices in the form of a register, or listed them in vestry minute books or other parish books.

Overseers of the Poor were directed under an Act of 1801-1802 to keep an Apprenticeship Register for their parish. The new legislation formalised the information to be recorded for each apprentice. Those apprenticeship registers which survive are usually found among the parish records. Those which were commenced under the new legislation usually begin in 1802 or 1803, and some of these record details of parish apprentices right up to 1844, when compulsory apprenticeship was abolished. These Apprenticeship Registers usually have a standard printed format, and give more details than the Apprenticeship Indentures do, including the names of the apprentice's parents. They record information about all the parish apprentices in a particular parish, even though a full series of the Indentures themselves have usually not survived.

This system of apprenticeship was separate to that of private apprenticeship, where a parent or guardian paid a premium to a master or mistress to have a child apprenticed to a trade or craft. Note that these parish Apprenticeship Registers do not record apprenticeships arranged and paid for privately, nor those organised through a parish or town charity.

Devon Family History Society volunteers are compiling and publishing a series of detailed indexes to the names of children found in the surviving apprenticeship registers held in Devon Record Office. These indexes will become available for sale from the Society as they are published. They will include most of the relevant information found in the original registers, including the names of the children's parents and the master or mistress to whom they were bound.