July 22, 2011

Early American Handwriting- Genealogy

At first reading, an early American document can sometimes be daunting. The earlier the records, the more difficult they are to read.

E. Kay Kirkham has written two good reference books on the subject; 300 Years of Manuscript and How to Read the Handwriting of Records of Early America.


I had the opportunity of taking a course from Mr. Kirkham many years ago and he began by saying "beware of the terminal loops and flourishes". In our family history research we often see-particularly in the first letter of a word-curly cues (these can be mistaken for "e" "a" or "o", etc.) I find it interesting that early Americans took such effort to add flourishes because a lot of the other problems we find are caused by the person trying to take short cuts as much as possible (remember the early pens were quills and had to be repeatedly dipped into ink.) The following are things we should be aware of as you attempt to read early records...


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