Ancestry Magazine

Whether or not your ancestors could read and write, you’ll learn a thing or two about them through the “signatures” they left on old documents.

It is an exciting moment to look at an ancestor’s original signature on a document. For a moment in time, it is as if we are standing there with them, pen in hand, imagining the land to be bought or sold, the will and the properties to be divided, the marriage that will join two lives. Even when their signature is only a mark, it represents an expression of their will and offers us a glimpse into their lives and their literacy—if we know what to look for. Even when we find our ancestor’s signature recorded in a deed book by a clerk, there is much that we can learn from the clerk’s facsimile signature of that ancestor.

Signatures in Unusual places
Two of the best possibilities for finding original signatures are probate packets and marriage bonds or permissions. In your search to find an ancestor’s signature or mark, it sometimes helps to look beyond records indexed under your ancestor’s name. For instance, your ancestor may no t have written a will, but he may have been a witness, provided bond, taken an inventory, or presented an accounting for friends, relatives, neighbors, and associates on several occasions, leaving original signatures in their probate files.

If your ancestor was wealthy enough to be the loaner rather than the borrower, you may find an original signature in a deed book. When a mortgage was paid off, sometimes the release was written in the margin of the book and signed by the person who had loaned the money.

Only the seller of land signed a deed if it was a simple land transfer. A deed may be the best opportunity you have to find signatures from your female ancestors since women infrequently wrote wills. In many cases a wife’s dower rights dictated that she also be a party to the deed.

Facsimile Signatures
Original signatures, however, are not always available to us. The signatures on documents transcribed into will and deed books were not written by your ancestor, but many clerks carefully reproduced the marks and signatures from the original document, creating what I will refer to as facsimile signatures . While not original, they can be immensely helpful in understanding your ancestor’s literacy and in providing genealogical evidence.

Clerks were more likely to create facsimiles of signatures if they were unusual or awkward. Those of us with ancestors who were illiterate, semiliterate, and who rarely picked up a pen—or those who were creative in their signature—are most likely to find facsimiles.

Persons with legible, script handwriting probably had their signatures recorded in the clerk’s own hand. However, most clerks were careful to preserve the form of the name, noting, for example, if the original was William, Wm, or Willm. Make careful note of the form of any signatu re you find.

Proficiency
Your ancestor’s signature may give you insight into his or her level of education. We can tell, for example, that Verlinda (Graves) Stone achieved only the most rudimentary of printing skills. In fact, the Maryland clerk’s attempt to record her printed signature from her will indicates that she no longer remembered the letters required for Verlinda. It seems the clerk either added “Stone” himself, or else that particular portion of her printed signature was accurate enough that he felt confident in printing the letters in his own hand. 1 Ethnicity
Think for a moment of the problem facing the county clerk recording a deed or will in which the maker was a German immigrant. What happened when the clerk came to the signature? He couldn’t read the German gothic letter forms, so he couldn’t write the English cursive equivalents. Early Scandinavian immigrants also wrote in a gothic text, creating a similar problem. The solution? A facsimile signature.

It is not always apparent merely from an ancestor’s name whether he or she was English or German. A gothic signature, even a facsimile, answers that question. Immigrants may learn to speak a new language, perhaps even read and write it, but rarely do they change their signatures. If the children of immigrants were educated at home or in a school within the ethnic community, they, too, wrote in gothic script. Later generations, although they had the same Germanic or Scandinavian names, were more likely to have been trained to write in cursive. Thus, a signature offers insight into how recently a family came to America.

A Variety of Marks
Not all individuals who signed with a mark used an x or +. It is interesting to observe the variety of wa ys in which persons attempted to make their marks both personal and unique. Some people managed only a simple squiggle or circle, but many used an initial letter of their first or last name, indicating that they had probably learned their alphabet as children.

Many clerks followed the practice of carefully recording individual marks. Unfortunately, this thoughtful practice was not universal. Some county clerks simply wrote “his mark” or “her x mark,” even though the mark may not have been an x . Some published abstracts do not include descriptions of the marks.

If your ancestor signed with a mark, you will want to obtain copies of every document. The differences between how two individuals wrote a simple letter of the alphabet can be significant.

When William Smith made his will in Cecil County, Maryland, in 1709, he signed with his W mark—as did the William Smith who witnessed it. The differences between the two are so distinctive that if we found another document recorded by an equally meticulous clerk, we probably would be able to assign the document with some surety to the correct man. They also indicate the value of keeping photocopies or scanned images of every ancestral signature or mark, whether original or facsimile.

Signatures as Evidence
Signatures and marks (whether facsimile or original) can be immensely helpful in cementing a case because they visually indicate that two documents almost surely belong to the same person, or that they probably belong to different persons. We must make the distinction in the latter instance because although similarities between two signatures or marks are probably not coincidental, dissimilarities may be a function of the recorder.

Similar signatures or marks, used with other records, can tell us that two documents were signed by the sa me person, allowing us to make connections over time, place, and marriage. Let’s look at some examples.

Edward Halsey. The value of searching for your ancestor as a witness is shown by comparing the original signature when Edward Halsey witnessed a 1772 receipt in Otsego County, New York, to the original signature when he witnessed a 1785 will in Gloucester County, New Jersey. 2

Although one signature is for Edward and one is for Edwd, other evidence is consistent with these being the same man. Pay careful attention to the lowercase letters, which often are the best indicator in determining a match.

Henrich and Dietrich Weitzel. The signatures to the oaths of affirmation made by German immigrants arriving in colonial Philadelphia can be valuable evidence in linking the ship of passage to a man who resided in interior Pennsylvania. 3

Henrich Weitzel left an original will in Lebanon Township of Lancaster County. There is also a facsimile signature in a deed book there. In 1751, Johan Henrich Weitzel arrived on the Patience and signed the oath. Is this the same man?

Dietrich Weitzel also left an original will in Lebanon Township. The name “Johan Diterich Weitsen” appears immediately above that of Henrich on the list. Could Weitsen be an error for Weitzel?

Examinations of the signatures provides the answers for both. Henrich’s signatures bear striking similarities. 4 Dietrich is just the opposite. He signed his will with a shaky signature, perhaps reflecting, as his will says, that “the mortality of my body draws nearer every minute. God grant me a happy death.” The man on the Patience signed with a mark, indicating the passenger was not the man in Lebanon Township.

Francis Walker. Chronology was a key fa ctor in showing that the descendents of Frances Walker of Staten Island and Woodbridge, New Jersey, were not descendents of the Frances Walker who married Elizabeth Soule, daughter of Mayflower passenger George Soule. 5

Facsimile marks from deeds when Frances Walker of Woodbridge sold land in 1686 and 1706 were a key piece of evidence in demonstrating that the documents belonged to one man. Unfortunately for hopeful Mayflower descendants, this showed that he could not be Frances, husband of Elizabeth Soule, because that Frances Walker died about 1701.

Sarah (Bolles) Chadbourne Nason. The appearance of a signature or mark may suggest the identity of a wife when little specific information is available.

In 1690/1, Sarah (Bolles) Chadbourne [wife of Humphrey] witnessed a will with her S mark. She was widowed in 1694, but remarried to an unidentified husband by 1707.

Martha, wife of Benjamin Nason, a neighbor of the Chadbournes, had died by 1705/6 when Benjamin and his wife Sarah sold land. Sarah’s similar S mark indicates that these widowed neighbors had married each other. 6

What’s in a name? Or even in a few letters or pen scratches on a page? A lifetime of hard work, of choices, of sacrifices. If you know what to look for, you may find much more than a name in the records your ancestors left behind.

Notes
1. John Frederick Dorman. Adventurers of Purse and Person, Virginia 1607—1624/5 (n.p.: Order of the First Families of Virginia, 1987), 329.

2. Patricia Law Hatcher. “The Halseys of Meigs County, Ohio; Otsego County, New York; and New Jersey,” New York Genealogical and Biographical Record 133(2002): 243—57.

3. The signatures are reproduced in volume 2 of Ralph Beaver Strassburger and William John Hinke, Pennsylvania German Pioneers: A Publication of the Original Lists of Arrivals in the Port of Philadelphia from 1727—1803 (Birdsboro, Pa.: Pennsylvania German Society, 1934; Picton Press reprint, 1992).

4. Patricia Law Hatcher. “Using Your Ancestors’ Markers,” Ancestry Daily News , 3 July 2003.

5. Robert Charles Anderson. “Elizabeth Soule, Wife of Francis Walker, and their Posterity,” Mayflower Quarterly 50 (February 1984): 31—40. Patricia Law Hatcher, “Richmond County Deeds `Liber A’—A Mystery Solved,” NYGBS Newsletter 10 (Winter 1999): 7—8.

6. Joseph Crook Anderson II. “Mary 3 Nason, wife of William Chadbourne of Berwick, Maine,” The American Genealogist 73 (April 1993): 106—12.

Patricia Law Hatcher, CG, FASG , is the author of Producing a Quality Family History and Locating Your Roots—Discover Your Ancestors Using Land Records and a frequent columnist for the Ancestry Daily News .