Standing inspection?

Leroy Hodson in uniform plus four others at a picnic, according to the notation. From their dress, it seems rather cold to be eating outdoors. I’d thought this was what he’d packed to take with him.

Advertisement

Take a magnifying glass to handwriting

You don’t have to be a handwriting expert to draw insights on family members. A single mailed letter from each of my Hodson great-grandparents offers me enough information to challenge the conventional family view of their personalities. (The letters and my analysis are posted elsewhere on this site.)

How literate were they? What were their speech patterns? What did they observe around them?

You can go to the handwriting books and experts, but it’s easy to see the energy in big, even wild script, versus the control in tiny penmanship. Do the lines remain horizontal, or do they veer upward (positive energy, we’re told) or downward (depressive)?

Oh, how I wish I had more! How I lament the fact that my great-aunt Vera lost her correspondence from my great-great-grandparents only a few years before I undertook this research.

~*~

Has handwriting – or even letter content – ever told you something about your ancestors? Have you ever had access to personal diaries and journals? Or, better yet, love letters?