By Emily Rinaman, Technical Services Librarian
More often than not, a child in 2022 will open a birthday card from his or her grandparents with a handwritten note inside and ask his or her parents to read it to them. It’s not a matter of the child being completely illiterate, rather, children under 18 (some young adults even) simply do not know how to read in cursive. “What’s cursive?” they might even ask. Cursive, to most younger generations, is an archaic and outdated form of handwriting. Let’s be honest, handwriting itself is even a dying art where most correspondence, even official documents, are typed. But before the reign of digital devices, one was considered accomplished if he or she had good penmanship and those in Tiffin and Seneca County were no exception to the rule.
June 7th 1824 Mr. Thomas Boyd and Lowell Robinson presented a petition praying that whereas there has been a State road leading out from Mansfield in Richland County to the Town of Tiffin in this county which said real mining in a triangular direction through the county must to the damage of Public and if opened and kept in repair will be useless in [?] and burdensome. Therefore your petitioners request that your honors would take the same into consideration and appoint [five] land holders to review and annul said road through this county agreeable to the acts regulating road and highways passed 26 Feb. AD 1820 and in so doing You will much oblige your petitioners granted. Richard Saqua, Edward Southerland, John [Sitzs], Lowell Robinson, Boswell [Munsrol] and George Lewison was appointed viewers to be viewed at the expense of the petitioners.
While penmanship spans centuries, there are five periods of handwriting into which American transcripts and written works fall. The first is Colonial (1600-1800 A.D.). During this era, one’s handwriting was a status symbol and often displayed the class or occupation of the writer. The proper way to write was with no finger movement in one continuous motion. Pupils practiced perfecting their handwriting for hours during this era. The Declaration of Independence was written in this style. A local example of this style can be seen in an excerpt from the Seneca County Commissioners Journal 1824-1834. The transcription for this particular document is provided in the photo caption.
A more rudimentary example can be seen in the image of a Seneca County immigrant Michael Long’s declaration of intention, taken from the Naturalization Record 1826-1843 L-S from the Seneca County Digital Library (SCDL). The transcription for this particular document is provided in the photo caption. (Notice the ink smear, which gives this excerpt more ambiance).
The Naturalization Records and the Seneca County Commissioners Office Journals have been loaned to the Tiffin-Seneca Public Library from the Seneca County Court of Common Pleas in small batches since 2017 for digitization. Once uploaded to the SCDL, three staff and two volunteers at T-SPL must add the word-for-word transcription to each digitized page to the best of their knowledge.
The State of Ohio Seneca County, ss Supreme Court at the term of July [?] 1826 Michael Long being duly sworn upon his corporal oath declareth and saith that it is his bona fide intention to become a citizen of the United States of America and to renounce forever all allegiance and fidelity to every foreign service, potentate - State of Sovereign whatever and particularly to George the 4th King of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland whereof he was lately a subject. Michael Long sword before me in open Court A. McGaffey, Clerk Sec.
The Civil War-era ushered in a new style of writing, fathered by a man named Platt Rogers Spencer, which became known as the Spencerian Method. This method, first published in 1848 as the Spencer and Rice System of Business and Ladies’ Pensmanship, became the main style taught in schools throughout the country from the 1850s-1880s. In Tiffin, there’s evidence in the Seventh Annual Catalogue of the Tiffin Union Schools for the Year 1867-1868 that penmanship was being taught in Senior Grammar School. The Coca-Cola and Ford logos were written in this style.
During the latter half of the 1800s, the Spencerian Method gave way to the Palmer Method, created by engrosser Austin Norman Palmer (an engrosser was someone who produced official documents like insurance policies and deeds using very fancy handwriting). This is when learning to write on horizontal lines became standard. The Palmer method is much simpler than the Spencerian Method.
While the Palmer Method did last decades (it was the most popular handwriting method taught in schools until the 1920s, eventually yet another new method formed, the Zaner-Bloser method, which is what most of our current senior citizens would have been taught. A former Junior Home student recalls in the Junior Homekid June 1989 of being taught penmanship as a child in the 1940s. Likewise, an alumnus of Melmore High School wrote in its Class of 1943 50th Class Reunion Commemorative Scrapbook that she had “learned to read any doctor’s handwriting.” (which really could be a complete digression to the topic at hand and a whole other conversation in itself!)
The above pen art was executed by A.M. Reichard, a penmanship instructor (and embosser) at Tiffin University in the 1920s. His work received national recognition. This was taken from the T.B.U. Outlook January 1928 on the SCDL.
Lastly, the D’Nealian Method emerged in 1978 (one year after National Handwriting Day was established) and was widely taught in schools until the late 1990s when cursive writing in general started to disappear with the rising popularity in computers. It appears that, if you peruse the Tystenacs (Tiffin University’s newspaper) on the SCDL, penmanship courses at Tiffin University had already been phased out by the late 1970s.
What’s interesting to note (pun intended) here is that those same children who receive a birthday card from their grandparents will at one point (if they haven’t already) become the owners of their own cell phones, a symbol of their developing maturity. In the past, men and women often received a special fountain pen as an initiation into adulthood. In different issues of the Tiffinian (Tiffin Columbian’s newspaper), there are briefs mentioning the Guest of Honor being presented with a fountain pen. An advertisement in the December 1919 issue even lists fountain pens as being an excellent gift idea.
Likewise, whereas students once received workbooks for their cursive writing practice work, they now receive a laptop (on long-term loan for the school year) to use for their classwork in multiple courses. If paired that with a new cell phone, a fountain pen looks like a baby’s toy!
Works cited:
Tiffinian December 1919. https://www.ohiomemory.org/digital/collection/p15005coll27/id/53073/rec/1
The Junior Homekid June 1989. https://www.ohiomemory.org/digital/collection/p15005coll27/id/47926/rec/21
T.B.U. Outlook January 1928. https://www.ohiomemory.org/digital/collection/p15005coll27/id/45567/rec/1
Seventh Annual Catalogue of the Tiffin Union Schools for the Year 1867-1868. https://www.ohiomemory.org/digital/collection/p15005coll27/id/37265/rec/1
Melmore High School Class of 1943. https://www.ohiomemory.org/digital/collection/p15005coll27/id/29690/rec/1
The Twisted History of Cursive Writing. https://www.wordgenius.com/the-twisty-history-of-cursive-writing/Xr0yWBPAJQAG8w-1
Cohen, Jennie. “A Brief History of Penmanship on National Handwriting Day”. https://www.history.com/news/a-brief-history-of-penmanship-on-national-handwriting-day
Schlueter, Preston. “Writing by Hand Matters.” March 8, 2021. https://www.gentlemansgazette.com/writing-by-hand-penmanship/
Seneca County Digital Library. https://www.ohiomemory.org/digital/collection/p15005coll27/search