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General => The Common Room => Topic started by: IgorStrav on Tuesday 08 December 15 17:49 GMT (UK)
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Hello all
Have just been looking at a marriage record in 1771 in Patrixbourne in Kent, where many of the participants on the page signed with their mark, generally a fairly wobbly cross.
However, the people I'm looking at both signed their mark with wobbly circles which does look unusual on the page.
Is there any significance to what mark was made? I would have thought a cross was easier to do for those who didn't have the need to hold a pen much - a circle's rather more difficult.
Any thoughts?
:)
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A recent same topic http://www.rootschat.com/forum/index.php?topic=736501.msg5823207#msg5823207
Stan
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Thank you, Stan, informative article.
I understand that the nature of the mark itself is immaterial in legal terms, but just wondered if there was any significance in a circle rather than a (perhaps more common) cross.
I assume that people used both.
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That's interesting, IgorStrav. I've only ever seen crosses (or variations of). One mark/cross looked a little too much like a swastika for my liking. :o
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I have examples of a mark which appears to be a rudimentary attempt at creating the initial of the individual's surname.
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Just doing some searching for someone here and the male Xed and the female , as brentor boy suggested, may have been an attempt at an initial. Just a line down, very wiggly as well
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And we all know that females often left their mark because their husbands did, for fear of showing them up.
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....... This may possibly reflect the progressive decline of the use of marks in marriage registers, with 32.6 per cent of husbands and 48.9 per cent of wives being unable to sign in 1841–5, but only 0.8 per cent and 1.0 per cent respectively by 1914 (Seventy-seventh annual report of the Registrar General (1914), xiv). Literacy, Edward Higgs http://www.rootschat.com/links/01gmx/
Stan
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I'd seen what looked like a capital "T", but with a really tiny bit above the crossbar - at the time I wondered if it'd been an attempt at the (appropriate) surname initial T, it looked a bit more laboured than the other, straightforward X cross on the entry...
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Thanks for all your thoughts. These wobbly "o"s weren't attempts at initials (people in question were Robert Castle and Susanna Budds), and are actually quite a lot harder to draw (I tried with my left hand) than an X.
But there you go, we'll never know why. Yet another insoluble genealogical mystery, we're used to those! ;D
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How interesting, I've only ever seen X's before, I can see I will have to pay more attention when scrolling. :-\
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I have seen hundreds of marks from 17th and 18th century marriage and will records. Most are just a plain cross, either this way + or this way x. Quite a few though aren't crosses at all but other types of circles, circles with dots inside, box-shaped and other manner of squiggles and indeterminate shapes.
I've always interpreted the non-crosses as an attempt by the quill-holder, being unable to properly write, to produce something unique to him/her that would be recognisable at some later date as something that could only be their 'SIGNature'.
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I have seen hundreds of marks from 17th and 18th century marriage and will records. Most are just a plain cross, either this way + or this way x. Quite a few though aren't crosses at all but other types of circles, circles with dots inside, box-shaped and other manner of squiggles and indeterminate shapes.
I've always interpreted the non-crosses as an attempt by the quill-holder, being unable to properly write, to produce something unique to him/her that would be recognisable at some later date as something that could only be their 'SIGNature'.
We can only guess, can't we. But it would be good to think that the writer - illiterate through no fault of their own, and perhaps conscious of wishing otherwise - was trying to achieve some personal control.
Yet another example of things we nowadays take for granted, and our ancestors could not.
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I'm always amazed that my ancestor, a lowly ag lab, was able to sign his name on his parish register marriage entry in 1798. I wonder if it was the only thing he could write, how much he could read and who taught him.
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Rightly or wrongly, I have always judged their literacy on the confidence of their signatures. Some I have seen have been very scratchy, so I have always thought perhaps they were limited in their ability to write. I do understand that age or infirmity will affect things as well.