Working on a local history project, Floyd Ramsey was puzzled while researching Dolly Copp, a 19th century farm woman who seemed gregarious, but fidgeted nervously with her necklace beads whenever a stagecoach stopped near her farm in Gorham, N.H. "The beads part didn't fit in," Ramsey recalled.
When he learned that Irene P. Lambert could produce a personality sketch from a sample of Copp's handwriting, he gave it a try. After studying Copp's handwriting, Lambert concluded that, while Copp was a strong-willed woman who enjoyed people, she also was self-conscious, afraid strangers would laugh at her.
With that analysis, more than a decade ago Lambert became one of the pioneers in a comparatively new, still-little-used tool in genealogical research; analyzing handwriting to better understand the personalities of ancestors.
You can read more about this fascinating method of studying our ancestors' personalities in an article in the Hartford Courant written by Steve Grant at http://tinyurl.com/2kexbt.
