Minding those P’s and Q’s, or U’s and R’s.

Archives | 12/08/2011

Reading old handwriting is often a problem for genealogists. You often have to know that certain symbols were used in place of letters in old handwriting and the old forms letters used to take, to say nothing of their spelling from ages past. Eighteenth Century English is even worse than Nineteenth Century. Those of us who taught school in the days when students were still asked to write answers to essay questions on tests have less trouble reading old documents because of all the practice we got scoring examination papers. Sometimes, a misread letter can make all the difference.

We had a lady come into the Archives, who wanted to know what a “low hide” was. She had an inventory for her ancestor which kept mentioning these low hides. When looking at the original, we found it was actually a fancy, looped “C” she was reading and so they were cow hides that her ancestor had stockpiled in his estate. Recently, another lady wanted more information about her ancestral home, “Saddle and Bridle.” She had found that he had left the house to one of his sons in his will. Upon pulling the actual will, we discovered he had actually left the son “one horse saddle and bridle” rather than “one house, Saddle and Bridle.” It made quite a difference. Especially as the “horse saddle and bridle” were only valued at $80.

Clark