Handwriting Provides Clues to Ancestors' Personality

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.

Comments

[Happy Dae]

Oh definitely!

I've collected hundreds of letters, diaries, recipes and other handwritten notes from my ancestors and their families. I've taken courses in graphoanalysis and have read several books. Although I'm a relative amateur (pun intended), I have become adept in identifying personal traits through handwriting.

Combining the revealed personality traits with Genograms has given me a clearer picture of my family members, both current and ancestral, and their interpersonal relationships.

Happy Dae
http://www.ShoeStringGenealogy.com/ssg1.htm

[Infinite Ancestors]

I wouldn't put much credence in a reading of an ancestor's handwriting. It's a bit too much like astrology. It's hard enough for modern-day psychologists and psychiatrists to grok a person's personality even with a good bit of one-on-one contact. Certainly you can use handwriting analysis to determine if the same person wrote documents; that's a much more objective result. Please folks, if you use this and publish the results, make sure to cite the source so people can decide for themselves how much, if any, stock to put in it.

[Joan McIlmoyl Cleghorn, U.E.]

I have to disagree with 'Infinite Ancestors' in comparing graphoanalysis & astrology! I can't recall having ever heard of the police using an astrologer to help with a case yet it's not at all unusual for graphoanalysis to be used. Indeed, there are corporations who require graphoanalysis prior to hiring someone however they certainly don't require that one's stars be read!

I believe we can find out some broad, general characteristics of our ancestors' personalities from graphoanalysis, which combined with our discoveries from research, can give us a fairly accurate picture of what kind of people they were. This of course helps 'put flesh on the bones' and add to the 'history' of family history.

[Ken Coit]

Can anyone recommend a person who can compare signatures to determine if the same person wrote them?

[Margaret]

I lean towards Infinite Ancestors on the handwriting thesis. Some people have better hand eye coordination or more training in Spencerian script and thus may appear to be more "stable" than those with more distinctive styles.

Most of us can recognize similar handwriting -- which is why we have to sign credit card receipts that can be compared with the card's signature or wwith that on our driver's license.

I will say that handwriting types seem to run in families. As my children have aged, their handwriting has become almost indistinguishable.

[Dave]

I too am skeptical of handwriting analysis. Do the proponents of this technique have any scientific studies they can cite to support their position? I would be interested in reading them. It would be great if I could have someone look at my 200 year old documents and tell me about the personalities of my ancestors. But I would have to be convinced first.

[Infinite Ancestors]

Police use all kinds of tools (including psychics) to gather leads, but this kind of input doesn't hold up in court. US courts only allow handwriting to be used to determine author, not mental state. Also, there are legal issues with using it for employment (e.g., equal employment and disabilities). I'd walk away from any job that used it as a condition of employment.

There are no agreed-upon accreditations or certifications for graphology. Even different organizationss within the industry disagree on procedures, results, and statements of what can be accomplished with graphology. This is psuedo-science at best, use at your own risk. I'd consider it "for entertainment purposes only".

[Chuck]

What we really should do is exhume our ancestors and read the bumps on their skulls!

[chuck]

Tacky of me to get sarcastic with out supplying useful information. For an overview of graphology, see http://www.skepdic.com/graphol.html

[Daniel Kortenkamp]

Many controlled statistical studies of handwriting characteristics have been published in professional journals of psychology. None show a correlation between handwriting characteristics and personality. Any information about the personality of the writer comes from the content of the writing, not the handwriting characteristics.

[Susanna Friedman]

I had an unusual experience while a junior in college. Seated next to me was a young man whom I found, upon questioning, studied handwriting. He used to take my class journal and tell me on which days I felt bad and happy days--all correct! Years later, working for doctors, I came across an article saying persons with certain illnesses can be ascertained by their handwriting. Handwriting, it seems, changes with a person's health, which is logical. As far as personality--I don't know. I do know that one Houston expert had many handwriting samples with no names given her at a party where I was a guest. Upon analysis, she pointed out characteristics of the various people (none of whom she knew), and she was right for the ones she analyzed because I knew them! It was fascinating. She was an expert for court trials for wills, etc.

[WindWalker]

I have to be a bit skeptical on much of this. I changed the way I formed various letters while growing up simply because I saw someone forming the letter in a particular way and liked it. Also, my handwriting, while recognizably mine, can change based on 1) whether I'm using a very fine tip (which I prefer) or a thicker one and 2) how tired I am. I fractured my writing thumb during a "spirited discussion" in a bar in Thailand while in the Army and it begins to ache after a bit of writing (another reason I use the PC for most of my correspondence).

[M J C]

I don't know about personality based on signatures, but this example is something strange which I cannot explain. When I found a signature of my grandfather on his marriage license, I was very surprised because the way his surname was written was exactly as my father had signed his name. My grandfather died when my father was very young. Daddy could not have learned to write from his father since he was so extremely young when he lost him that he did not even remember him. From what I have been told, the two were nothing alike in personality and character, even though their signature look so much alike.