Spirit of 1776

[ericp]

While in Boston a couple of weeks ago, I took a couple of pictures of really old handwriting.

The first example seems to come from the 1812 war.  It's some sort of basic ledger and clearly very "ordinary".  This was taken at the Museum in Charlestown where the USS Constitution is.

The second example dates from July 16 1776 and was under a thick glass in the dark with a 3-second light activated by a button.  I thought it was interesting.  Not much to say as it's not quite copperplate and not Spencerian either.  This comes from the Old State House.

[Brad franklin]

Very beautiful indeed!

[AAAndrew]

I love these old books. Thanks so much for sharing! Ultimately, I'd love to have a general, every-day kind of hand like this with which I could write letters.

I've started to keep my eye out for ones ever since I recently ran across a large ledger from 1853 in an auction pre-view. It turned out I couldn't make the auction itself, but I did take a quick picture of a page. What I also found a lot of fun was that the original blotter/pen wipe was still in the ledger 150 years later.

Now I wish I had placed a bid, so I'm starting to watch out whenever I can. I've seen some on the famous online auction site but it's a little difficult to get an idea of the quality of the writing sometimes.

Here's a photo I took you might appreciate.

[Freda M]

This handwriting is beautiful.  But from someone working on a thesis dependent on reading pages and pages of this, it often gets hard to read.  This was part of my inspiration to learn calligraphy and move into a spencerian type writing.  I figure if I get a good feel for the letter forms I may be better able to decipher some handwriting.

[AAAndrew]

This handwriting is beautiful.  But from someone working on a thesis dependent on reading pages and pages of this, it often gets hard to read.  This was part of my inspiration to learn calligraphy and move into a spencerian type writing.  I figure if I get a good feel for the letter forms I may be better able to decipher some handwriting.

Cool. Pictures?

[jeanwilson]

In looking for something else, I ran across this album on Flickr - posted by the son of Charles Siple who was a member of IAMPETH.
This might be better posted somewhere else....is there a section for stuff like this?

https://www.flickr.com/photos/8729526@N02/albums/72157604307028191

[AAAndrew]

I ran across an online edition of a ledger of contributors to an anti-slavery organization in Massachusets around 1831-1856. Tons of names, different hands, headers, names and small notations. Lots of cool examples

https://archive.org/details/liberatormailboo03bost