Handwriting

Genealogy > Handwriting

All our contemporary handwriting belongs to the italic tradition. If you want to know all about your own handwriting (or is it scribble?) you might like to read the article "The acquisition of handwriting in the UK" by Tom Davis of Birmingham University, dated 25/5/1994. The handwriting styles he discusses and illustrates are the same ones that have been taught in Australian schools in the past half century.
Sooner or later the family historian has to make sense of the non-italic handwriting called Secretary hand or Gothic script or German script or just the Old Script, depending on the time and place.
This old script was dropped in France about 1650 (though it influenced French handwriting right through to the nineteenth century), in Britain about 1700 (but it hung on for a while as an "ingrossing" script for legal documents), in Scandinavia in the early nineteenth century and in Germany only at the end of World War Two.
There are a few good books on the subject but you might have to look for them in one of the larger public libraries or in a university library. One that helped me is : Emmison, F G. How to read local archives 1550-1700. London, The Historical Association, 1967. I found it in the Chifley Library of the Australian National University, Canberra. Another is German, one of the Teach Yourself series that sets out the full alphabet.
To start with here are two German examples with transcripts and English translations. They are postcards written to soldiers on the Western Front during 1916:

Wilhelm Berghänser of Herdorf to his brother, 16 April 1916
Willy Hebel of Nürnberg to his friend Emil Becht, 4 May 1916

Follow on by visiting one of these Web sites:
Various

Alphabetisierung und Schriftkultur in der Frühen Neuzeit.
This is a site that shows numerous examples of German handwriting in signatures from between 1800 and 1810. In German.
Alte deutsche Handschriften /Old German handwritten scripts
Samples of Old German handwritten scripts. In German.
England

Two torches at Keighly: The story of a Yorkshire family, by Andrew Booth, Harrogate, UK.
Sixteenth and seventeenth century document - wills from the Borthwick Institute of Historical Research at the University of York and other documents from the Public Record Office and the West Yorkshire Archive Service - reproduced in replica fonts.

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© Copyright Andrew Eliason, 2000-2014


		Genealogy > Handwriting
		All our contemporary handwriting belongs to the italic tradition. If you want to know all about your own handwriting (or is it scribble?) you might like to read the article "The acquisition of handwriting in the UK" by Tom Davis of Birmingham University, dated 25/5/1994. The handwriting styles he discusses and illustrates are the same ones that have been taught in Australian schools in the past half century. Sooner or later the family historian has to make sense of the non-italic handwriting called Secretary hand or Gothic script or German script or just the Old Script, depending on the time and place. This old script was dropped in France about 1650 (though it influenced French handwriting right through to the nineteenth century), in Britain about 1700 (but it hung on for a while as an "ingrossing" script for legal documents), in Scandinavia in the early nineteenth century and in Germany only at the end of World War Two. There are a few good books on the subject but you might have to look for them in one of the larger public libraries or in a university library. One that helped me is : Emmison, F G. How to read local archives 1550-1700. London, The Historical Association, 1967. I found it in the Chifley Library of the Australian National University, Canberra. Another is German, one of the Teach Yourself series that sets out the full alphabet. To start with here are two German examples with transcripts and English translations. They are postcards written to soldiers on the Western Front during 1916: Wilhelm Berghänser of Herdorf to his brother, 16 April 1916 Willy Hebel of Nürnberg to his friend Emil Becht, 4 May 1916 Follow on by visiting one of these Web sites: Various Alphabetisierung und Schriftkultur in der Frühen Neuzeit. This is a site that shows numerous examples of German handwriting in signatures from between 1800 and 1810. In German. Alte deutsche Handschriften /Old German handwritten scripts Samples of Old German handwritten scripts. In German. England Two torches at Keighly: The story of a Yorkshire family, by Andrew Booth, Harrogate, UK. Sixteenth and seventeenth century document - wills from the Borthwick Institute of Historical Research at the University of York and other documents from the Public Record Office and the West Yorkshire Archive Service - reproduced in replica fonts.

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