More about deciphering eighteenth century handwriting.

Readers will, of course, have seen the sign “Ye Olde English Tea Shoppe” when looking for a place to have a cuppa. The “y” in the sign is a thorn and represents “th”; therefore one should say “The Olde …” The thorn is used in other words too.

Lower and upper case letters of the alphabet in their handwritten forms can be difficult to recognize and differentiate. Nouns were often capitalized but not consistently. The writer will sometimes capitalize a noun on one line but not on another. Or … use the lower case for a proper noun. Cast your eyes on these samples of upper and lower case letters.

Doesn’t the capital “L” look like an “S”? Many’s the time my colleagues and I have conferred in a manuscript library over the handwriting in a letter, trying to decide whether a particular word begins with a capital “G” or a lower case “g”.

One of the more confusing writing conventions met with in reading and transcribing eighteenth century letters and diaries is the “long s” that looks like the present-day “f;” it was used in the middle of words though not at the end. The words shown are “Congress” and “possible.”

I’m off shortly to help a friend examine a cache of family letters. Maybe the tips and examples given will help you decipher old family letters or diaries, if you’re lucky enough to have them.

The source for this post is “What Does That Say?” Series, Pt. I found HERE.

The Museum of the American Revolution opened in April of this year. I visited it last week and can report that it is a wonderful addition to a city rich in historic sites and institutions related to the founding of our nation. The films, exhibits and artifacts in this well-designed museum help the visitor understand how the diverse American colonies, often at odds with each other, united to gain independence from Britain. The history examined spans the years from 1760 to the adoption of the Constitution in 1787 and the inauguration of George Washington as president in 1789. And, it is suggested, onward to the present as we continue to try to be true to the founding principles of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

A serious effort has been made to include insights into the experiences of all sorts of people, women and children as well as men. Visitors will meet both the elite and the humble, those who served in the military as well their civilian counterparts, Native Americans and enslaved workers, Patriots and Loyalists. Particular attention is paid to the Oneida Indians who sided with the Americans as opposed to other Indian nations that saw their interests better protected by the British. The Oneida Nation contributed $10 million toward the construction of this new museum and is suitably honored.

The museum is visitor friendly, with many interactive displays. The impressive collection of artifacts and objects includes all things military: from uniforms and kits to guns and swords—in American, British, Hessian, and French versions. The life-size troops pictured are Dragoons of the British Legion.

In one niche is a collection of flags. Another is devoted to women in their various roles. Still others to household necessities and American-made products, including china and fabrics. There are manuscripts, printed documents and broadsheets. Visitors can view books like Thomas Paine’s Common Sense and Baron Von Steuben’s Regulations for the Order and Discipline of Troops in the United States; his drills turned a rag-tag army into an effective fighting force.

Happily there are reproductions visitors can touch. Or sit in. This is the chair, with the famous carving of the sun on its high back, from which George Washington as President of the Constitutional Convention listened to the debates. Of it Benjamin Franklin is said to have remarked: “I have often … in the course of the session … looked at that sun behind the President without being able to tell whether it was rising or setting. But now at length I have the happiness to know it is a rising and not a setting sun.”

Clearly the museum is great for kids. There are life-size depictions of famous events: watch Americans tear down the statue of George III in New York City for example. There are so-called “immersive events” with appropriate sound effects: stand beneath a reproduction of Boston’s Liberty Tree where residents discussed the pros and cons of resistance to the British; choose some fighting clothes; climb aboard a privateer’s ship; sniff a tar-coated hauser.

Perhaps the pièce de résistance among the artifacts at the museum is George Washington’s war tent, one of two, used when he was on the road. At the end of a well-done film, describing its construction, use, and conservation, on the stage behind a scrim and in a protected environment the tent itself is revealed. Seeing it is almost like a religious experience.

After some refreshment at the café, the next stop is the well-stocked shop where visitors are sure to find souvenirs or gifts for all ages. There is an excellent selection of books, both scholarly and popular. I am hoping the shop will, in the near future, carry Selected Correspondence of John Jay and Sarah Livingston Jay and In the Words of Women, both by me and my colleagues Louise North and Landa Freeman. There are gifts aplenty for kids but it was a bit jarring, in this day and age, to see these grouped by sex. It was also disappointing and rather ironic to find that many items on sale were made in China, Honduras, Nicaragua, or Pakistan. How great it would have been for a museum about the founding of our nation for them to have been made in the USA.

Visit the museum’s website to purchase tickets in advance at specified times. There is so much to see and absorb that tickets are good for another visit on the next day.

On a personal note, it was gratifying to see many visiting school groups, while carefully arranging to be well ahead or behind them because of the noise. And it was a particular pleasure to talk to some of the other visitors. I met and engaged in conversation a woman of the Lenape nation who visits classes of schoolchildren in Native dress to tell stories and provide information about Native cultures and games. We exchanged email addresses.

For the next few days I will be visiting the Museum of the American Revolution in Philadelphia. It opened in April and I am anxious to see what steps have been taken to make the period more meaningful and accessible to young and old alike. I’m interested, of course, in how much attention has been paid to women and how they are represented. More fodder for this blog.

Part of what attracted me to research in the era of the America Revolution was the excitement of handling and reading the actual letters of the participants and of the general public, with an emphasis on women. I was not only interested in the content but also in the handwriting itself, which I found to be a powerful manifestation of the writer, capable of establishing a personal connection between that writer and myself.

To read a letter one has to decipher the handwriting, to become familiar with the styles and customs which prevailed. In this regard I urge you to read the two topics listed in “About the Blog” on the right: “Letter-writing and More” and “Reading Old Documents”.

I recently came upon a series which concerns itself with “Deciphering the Handwritten Records of Early America” presented in “A State Archives of North Carolina blog.” Part I presents a section dealing with abbreviations, shorthand, and lettering which will be useful to anyone trying to read 18th century manuscripts. Names are often difficult to make out. These are the ones that appear in the article.
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Note the use of colons and the practice of shortening names and words by removing certain letters, frequently all but the first and last, and using superscript for the last letter(s). Note, too, the use of an “X” for “Christ” in Christopher.

Often there was no indication of what letters were missing as in this sentence which was the standard closing of a letter: “I am sir yr most obt and hble servt” that reads “I am sir your most obedient and humble servant”.

One characteristic common to handwriting at the time was the persistent use of the ampersand—&—for “and” as you will have noted if you are a reader of the letters in my blog posts. I find that quite charming for some reason, perhaps because I am interested in typefaces and the versions of the ampersand in the different fonts, many of which are beautiful. Of course these differences are not generally evident in handwriting.

More in the next post.

In 1747 the following purported to be the plea of a woman accused of having multiple children out of wedlock before a Connecticut court, making the case that she should not be fined or otherwise punished. It appeared in publications in Scotland, London, then in Boston and New York. No one knew if Polly Baker was real or who had written the speech. Nevertheless, the piece circulated far and wide, generating discussions of marriage, out-of-wedlock births, divorce, and the punishment due offenders. Abbé Raynal, a French ex-cleric and writer included it in his work Histoire Philosophique et Politique, 1770, questioning the severity of New England laws.

The Speech of MISS POLLY BAKER, before a Court of Judicature, at Connecticut near Boston in New-England; where she was prosecuted the Fifth Time, for having a Bastard Child: Which influenced the Court to dispense with her Punishment, and induced one of her Judges to marry her the next Day.

May it please the Honourable Bench to indulge me in a few Words: I am a poor unhappy Woman, who have no Money to fee Lawyers to plead for me, being hard put to it to get a tolerable Living. I shall not trouble your Honours with long Speeches; for I have not the Presumption to expect, that you may, by any Means, be prevailed on to deviate in your Sentence from the Law, in my Favour. All I humbly hope is, That your Honours would charitably move the Governor’s Goodness on my Behalf, that my Fine may be remitted. This is the Fifth Time, Gentlemen, that I have been dragg’d before your Court on the same Account; twice I have paid heavy Fines, and twice have been brought to Publick Punishment, for want of Money to pay those Fines. This may have been agreeable to the Laws, and I don’t dispute it; but since Laws are sometimes unreasonable in themselves, and therefore repealed, and others bear too hard on the Subject in particular Circumstances; and therefore there is left a Power somewhat to dispense with the Execution of them; I take the Liberty to say, That I think this Law, by which I am punished, is both unreasonable in itself, and particularly severe with regard to me, who have always lived an inoffensive Life in the Neighbourhood where I was born, and defy my Enemies (if I have any) to say I ever wrong’d Man, Woman, or Child. Abstracted from the Law, I cannot conceive (may it please your Honours) what the Nature of my Offence is. I have brought Five fine Children into the World, at the Risque of my Life; I have maintain’d them well by my own Industry, without burthening the Township, and would have done it better, if it had not been for the heavy Charges and Fines I have paid. Can it be a Crime (in the Nature of Things I mean) to add to the Number of the King’s Subjects, in a new Country that really wants People? I own it, I should think it a Praise-worthy, rather than a punishable Action. I have debauched no other Woman’s Husband, nor enticed any Youth; these Things I never was charg’d with, nor has any one the least Cause of Complaint against me, unless, perhaps, the Minister, or Justice, because I have had Children without being married, by which they have missed a Wedding Fee. But, can ever this be a Fault of mine? I appeal to your Honours. You are pleased to allow I don’t want Sense; but I must be stupified to the last Degree, not to prefer the Honourable State of Wedlock, to the Condition I have lived in. I always was, and still am willing to enter into it; and doubt not my behaving well in it, having all the Industry, Frugality, Fertility, and Skill in Oeconomy, appertaining to a good Wife’s Character. I defy any Person to say, I ever refused an Offer of that Sort: On the contrary, I readily consented to the only Proposal of Marriage that ever was made me, which was when I was a Virgin; but too easily confiding in the Person’s Sincerity that made it, I unhappily lost my own Honour, by trusting to his; for he got me with Child, and then forsook me: That very Person you all know; he is now become a Magistrate of this Country; and I had Hopes he would have appeared this Day on the Bench, and have endeavoured to moderate the Court in my Favour; then I should have scorn’d to have mention’d it; but I must now complain of it, as unjust and unequal, That my Betrayer and Undoer, the first Cause of all my Faults and Miscarriages (if they must be deemed such) should be advanc’d to Honour and Power in the Government, that punishes my Misfortunes with Stripes and Infamy. I should be told, ’tis like, That were there no Act of Assembly in the Case, the Precepts of Religion are violated by my Transgressions. If mine, then, is a religious Offence, leave it to religious Punishments. You have already excluded me from the Comforts of your Church-Communion. Is not that sufficient? You believe I have offended Heaven, and must suffer eternal Fire: Will not that be sufficient? What Need is there, then, of your additional Fines and Whipping? I own, I do not think as you do; for, if I thought what you call a Sin, was really such, I could not presumptuously commit it. But, how can it be believed, that Heaven is angry at my having Children, when to the little done by me towards it, God has been pleased to add his Divine Skill and admirable Workmanship in the Formation of their Bodies, and crown’d it, by furnishing them with rational and immortal Souls. Forgive me, Gentlemen, if I talk a little extravagantly on these Matters; I am no Divine, but if you, Gentlemen, must be making Laws, do not turn natural and useful Actions into Crimes, by your Prohibitions. But take into your wise Consideration, the great and growing Number of Batchelors in the Country, many of whom from the mean Fear of the Expences of a Family, have never sincerely and honourably courted a Woman in their Lives; and by their Manner of Living, leave unproduced (which is little better than Murder) Hundreds of their Posterity to the Thousandth Generation. Is not this a greater Offence against the Publick Good, than mine? Compel them, then, by Law, either to Marriage, or to pay double the Fine of Fornication every Year. What must poor young Women do, whom Custom have forbid to solicit the Men, and who cannot force themselves upon Husbands, when the Laws take no Care to provide them any; and yet severely punish them if they do their Duty without them; the Duty of the first and great Command of Nature, and of Nature’s God, Encrease and Multiply. A Duty, from the steady Performance of which, nothing has been able to deter me; but for its Sake, I have hazarded the Loss of the Publick Esteem, and have frequently endured Publick Disgrace and Punishment; and therefore ought, in my humble Opinion, instead of a Whipping, to have a Statue erected to my Memory.

In late 1777 or early 1778 Abbé Raynal visited Benjamin Franklin, who was in Paris seeking French aid for the American Revolution, and found him in the company of Silas Deane, an American diplomat. Raynal and Deane entered into a discussion of the veracity of the Baker plea. After listening to the debate for some time, Franklin broke in addressing Raynal: “M. l’Abbé, I am going to set you straight. When I was young and printed a newspaper, it sometimes happened, when I was short of material to fill my sheet, that I amused myself by making up stories, and that of Polly Baker is one of the number.” This anecdote made the rounds and the plea’s authorship was confirmed by several people close to Franklin. The piece, though humorous, had the effect of supporting the movement for social reforms.

When Franklin was a teenager he worked for his brother James who published a weekly newspaper in Boston. Young Benjamin, for fun, began secretly submitting articles, fourteen in all, as “Silence Dogood,” a fictitious widow. Her musings were hugely popular, and she received several marriage proposals. When brother James found out that Benjamin was the author he was furious leading Franklin to leave Boston the next year and strike out on his own in Philadelphia.

The Speech of Miss Polly Baker, 15 April 1747,” Founders Online, National Archives, last modified June 29, 2017, http://founders.archives.gov/documents/Franklin/01-03-02-0057. [Original source: The Papers of Benjamin Franklin, vol. 3, January 1, 1745, through June 30, 1750, ed. Leonard W. Labaree. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1961, pp. 120–125.] Image of Franklin in his “frontiersman” attire by Johann Martin Will (1777), The Colonial Williamsburg Foundation.