RootsChat.Com
General => The Common Room => The Lighter Side => Topic started by: Honor on Friday 16 September 16 23:06 BST (UK)
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Does this typically indicate illiteracy on the part of the person signing?
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Yes....it is usually followed by the words "his or her" mark.
Carol
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It normally does. However, there may be other reasons. I have come across a man who signed his name on his marriage certificate and on the birth certificates of all his children except the last, on which he made his X mark witnessed by the registrar. I was puzzled by this until the 1911 census showed he had recently become blind.
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Or it can mean the assumption of illiteracy
The poorer classes were often in awe of authority, so if told by the minister / registrar to "make their mark" they might do so even if they could actually sign their name.
I have a ancestress who signed her name on her marriage cert and ran a grocery shop for many years after being widowed, so was presumably literate. Yet when she registered her mother's death, she made her mark -- can only think the registrar assumed she couldn't write and so told her to do so.
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I've also read that sometimes if the groom couldn't write his name, but the bride could, she would also just make her mark so as not to appear superior to her husband.
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I've also read that sometimes if the groom couldn't write his name, but the bride could, she would also just make her mark so as not to appear superior to her husband.
Thankfully that ship sailed a very long time ago ;D ;D
Carol
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I think this may have been the case with some "Highland" folks who only spoke Gaelic where the Registrar had little or no Gaelic i.e. the person who would sign wouldn't be able to understand & would have to "make their mark"
May also be the case with someone with a broken arm if that was the hand they wrote with ??? ;D
Annie
Added,
Or someone who was Deaf & Dumb (I know the term has changed) to "Mute" ::)
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I have an ancestor who when told to make his mark wrote a beautiful R. He later became a parish clerk so was certainly literate.
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Perfect example of "assumption" then?
As said, "Never judge a book by it's cover" ???
Annie
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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). With the spread of compulsory schooling, the signing of the marriage register had become an inadequate indication of levels of functional literacy and education, and the analysis of the data was probably not worthwhile in the over-stretched conditions of the GRO in the late nineteenth century and during the Great War "Literacy" Edward Higgs http://www.rootschat.com/links/06va/
"Signature in Marriage Register" Seventy-seventh annual report of the registrar-general http://www.rootschat.com/links/01ihz/
Stan
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An "X" is never conclusive proof of illegitimacy. Unless I suppose they're the only person that doesn't sign.
A lot of my country labourer folk sign their marriage certificates with an x, but this may have been the assumption of the vicar that they were illegitimate.
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Claire, I think you are confusing illegitimacy with illiteracy, two entirely different things.
Jebber
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Claire, I think you are confusing illegitimacy with illiteracy, two entirely different things.
Jebber
;D
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|An X on a copy certificate doesn't necessarily mean that the mark on the original was not something more significant. Some people used a complex mark related to their trade or ancestry in the place of a signature. This was deliberately chosen to be difficult to copy and hence to reproduce on any copy of an original document.
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Does this typically indicate illiteracy on the part of the person signing?
I would say in the vast majority of cases yes.
To add to the other comments. Another way of looking at is that even if someone did sign their name, this does not necessarily mean they were functionally literate. They might have learnt to sign their name just for the ceremony, so their name might have been the only thing they could read and write.
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There is no definite answer to this question, it is all supposition, and you can't go back and ask why they signed with an "X" rather than a signature. :)
Stan
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I find the signatures always quite interesting, for although a working class ancestor could write their own name, it was often a rather laboured, untidy signature indicating probably that they only ever rarely did any writing.
An X can indicate that a person was unable to see well enough to sign: we had always wonder d how long OH's grandmother had had cataracts. She had them removed age 60 in 1949 and we had understood that she had been blind for years before that. The proof lies in her marriage cert where she signs with an X, despite coming from a family where all were literate. So we deduce that she was almost blind even age 22.
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Several years ago my mum and her sister were discussing the certificates I'd got pertaining to one of their great grandmothers.
"What a pity she couldn't read and write", my mum said.
"Oh, she could read well enough", my aunt piped up. "Don't you remember that she'd lost her fingers in the mill?"
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Sometimes you have to be thankful for an X because you then have "the mark of .....", whereas many signatures are totally illegible scribbles!!
Melbell
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And sometimes we are lucky when the bride & groom can sign, as the ministers writing is so terrible we would not know who had married who!
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Sometimes you have to be thankful for an X because you then have "the mark of .....", whereas many signatures are totally illegible scribbles!!
On the other hand, I have transcribed some marriage certs. where the bride's signature is much more legible than the cleric's - and presumably correctly spelt, as his version was different ....
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And the final thing to this one....
being able to sign one's name does not necessarily mean that you are literate (i.e. can read and write). What it means is that you can sign your name.
As Stan says, sadly you can't conclude anything from the X mark, it's all supposition.
I enjoy assuming things as much as the next person, though.... ;)