I have been lucky enough to inherit from various family
members many handwritten documents (letters, poems, diaries, drawings, etc.). While some of the documents are in a
beautiful script and are fairly easy to read, others are extremely
difficult. It has often left me
wishing I had some kind of Rosetta Stone to assist in transcribing the handwriting and thus deciphering the content of
the document. And yet, there
is still something special about just holding the actual handwriting of an ancestor or
long-gone relative. It connects
you in a very direct way to the person as you see the way he or she formed letters and perhaps translated part of their personality onto
paper. The signature or
handwriting can feel almost like a talisman that transports you to the past and
the reality of your ancestor’s existence.
Back in the 19th century, “Autograph Books” (such as the one pictured above), were
quite popular with college students in particular, but their popularity faded
as yearbooks became more widespread and as yearbooks were used for the same
purpose autograph books had been used – to gather handwritten notes from friends and
acquaintances. Later, collectors
of celebrity signatures used autograph books to accumulate the signatures they
bagged and today autograph books are said to be most prevalent among children
who use them to collect signatures of favorite characters at amusement parks.
According to Wikipedia, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Autograph_book
, the popularity of autograph books in the U.S. can be attributed to German
immigrants who brought the tradition to America in the late 18th
century. Autograph books declined
in use after the Civil War except as a fad mainly among young women.
I was recently looking at a wonderful series of posts on 19th
century autograph books on a blog by Pam Beveridge called Heirlooms Reunited. It made me think of a small genealogy
project I started almost five years ago.
My project was simply to begin collecting in an inexpensive, spiral-bound, ruled
index card book a sample of the signatures and handwriting of every member of
my family and my wife’s family. I
asked each of the family members to kindly sign and date the book using their usual
signature (whether cursive or printed); but I also asked them to reproduce in
their usual handwriting a particular sentence – one that uses every letter of
the alphabet. “The quick brown fox jumped over the lazy dog.” *
My thinking at the time was to collect and preserve the
personal signatures of as many family members as I could; but the secondary purpose was to have a
sample of how each person wrote the letters in the alphabet. The sample sentence would serve as a sort of Rosetta Stone for transcribing letters and other documents present family members might leave
to future generations. Now, of course, I realize that while this
might be useful for my generation (the Baby Boomers) and our parents, I forgot
that starting with my sons’ generation and undoubtedly accelerating with our
future descendants, handwritten documents will become rare if not altogether
extinct as we move almost completely into a world of digitally produced text
and video (or whatever comes next).
Nonetheless, I decided
having sample signatures and a uniform sentence to compare handwriting among family members and across generations would be a worthy project – and so the project continues.
.png)
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| Photo of the book and of my handwriting sample. |
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* For those of
you who are especially observant – or who already knew of the correct sentence
that uses all the letters of the alphabet – you will note that I made an error
in the sentence I asked everyone to reproduce on their signature page. I forgot that the sentence must contain
the ending word “dogs” rather than “dog” in order to have the letter “s”
included! This will be corrected
going forward.
The photo of a 19th century autograph book is from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:AutographBook_2pages.png The photograph file is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic license and is able to be shared, copied, distributed and transmitted. The "author" of the work, according to the link cited immediately above, is "Playingwithbrushes."
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Copyright 2013, John D. Tew
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Great idea, John! I've got a previously unused mid 19th century autograph album, purchased on eBay, that I take with me to meetings, but I never thought of collecting the autographs of the younger generations in my own family. Thanks for the tip!
ReplyDeleteAlternatively instead of "jumped" you can use "jumps" and there's your "s" ;-)
ReplyDeleteThis is a great idea!
Hi Elizabeth! That is an excellent alternative -- and more economical too. It saves writing two letters and the "e" and "d" are otherwise covered in "over" and "dog." Welcome to The Prism . . . and thank you for commenting and sharing your elegant solution! :-)
ReplyDeleteI feel your frustration about reading autograph books, John. I have one that belonged to my great aunt. Once all the pages were filled she turned them at a 90 degree angle and used them again. Economical, but hard to decipher!
ReplyDeleteI love this idea! And, thanks for giving us the perfect model sentence. I didn't know that your pick contained every letter in the alphabet, but it makes me wonder if there is a sample few sentences that give variations on letter combinations like th, words ending and beginning with s, and so on. I know that many hands change letter forms depending on the word construction.
ReplyDeleteThanks again for sharing this idea.
What a fun idea! There really is something special about holding a document written by our ancestors.
ReplyDeleteAnd I think that especially with the prevalence of typewritten notes, emails, etc. in today's world, handwritten signatures will be extra special in the future.
I come from a family of autograph collectors and it makes perfect sense to collect our own. Thank you! footnoteMaven
ReplyDelete