Study Guide Colonial American Handwriting
Table of Contents
Practice Reading Short Texts
Before you practice reading these short texts, you will want to make sure that you can identify early American letters, names, and common abbreviations.
Text 1: Estate Inventory of Myer Polock (1779)
The first practice text is from Estate Inventory (1779) of the Jewish merchant Myer Polock and is written by Moses Seixas, a Sephardic Jew living in Newport Rhode Island. The original is in Rhode Island State Archives in the Confiscated Estates File. Click on the image to see a larger version.
Cultural Significance of the Sample:
Read a short biography of Moses Seixas from the Jewish Encyclopedia. Compare his handwriting in this document to that of his famous letter to George Washington and the unofficial copy of Washington's reply (Manuscript Division, Library of Congress). What differences do you notice between how Seixas writes when it is an important letter and when it is a court document? Although Moses Seixas was born in New York, he would have been educated in the Portuguese tradition at Congregation Shearith Israel. What can his signature tell us about his self presentation or education?
Text 2: Estate of Joseph Daggett (1718)
The second practice text is from the Estate Inventory (1718) of Joseph Daggett of Martha's Vineyard. Like many early American handwriting samples, this is from a microfilm, so it is harder to read that the example above. It is also in a different alphabet, and is less carefully written. The original is in Dukes County Registry of Probate (Dukes County Courthouse, Edgartown, Mass.), volume I page 73. The microfilm copy is from Massachusetts Archives.
Answer (Nineteenth-Century Transcription)
Cultural Significance of the Sample:
Joseph Daggett was one of the few colonists in New England to legally wed a Wampanoag woman. Read a short introduction to the Daggett Family, including Joseph Daggett. One of the "subscribers," Experience Lu[i]ce, is the brother of "White-eyed Henry Luce," who committed fornication with Joseph Daggett's daughter Ellis Daggett, and fathered her son Black Henry Luce" (see the Daggett Kinship Chart). Compare the handwriting used by the court scribe on the Vineyard with that used by Moses Seixas above. How do you account for the differences in style, and what is the significance of the differences?
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