Colonial American Handwriting: 1600s-1700s Documents

You've discovered land records showing your ancestor received a colonial land patent in 1690 Virginia. The document could reveal where they settled and establish family relationships. There's just one problem. The handwriting looks nothing like modern cursive. The lowercase s resembles an f. The d has a strange leftward loop. Words you'd never capitalize are capitalized randomly.

Colonial American handwriting from the 1600s and 1700s presents unique challenges for genealogists and historians. According to Atlas Obscura, in colonial America, the very style in which one formed letters was determined by one's place in society. Understanding these historical scripts opens access to land records, wills, church documents, and family papers spanning America's founding centuries.

Learning to read early American handwriting requires understanding period script styles, recognizing distinctive letter forms, and practicing with authentic documents.

Quick Takeaways

• Colonial handwriting styles evolved from secretary hand (1600s-mid 1700s) to round hand and copperplate (mid-to-late 1700s)
• The long s (resembling f), looping d, and uncrossed t are the most challenging letter forms for modern readers
• Benjamin Franklin published the first American handwriting models in 1748, standardizing colonial writing instruction
• The National Archives Revolutionary War Pension Files project offers 2.3 million documents for transcription practice

Evolution of Colonial American Handwriting Styles

Colonial handwriting changed significantly across two centuries as American society developed its own identity.

Secretary Hand: The English Inheritance (1600s-1750s)

Secretary hand was a European handwriting style developed in the early 1500s. Until the middle of the 18th century, American colonies relied on handwriting models from England. Colonists wrote secretary, humanist, or mixed hands that were indistinguishable from their English contemporaries.

The Library of Congress paleography guide explains that this handwriting covers Anglo-American writing from roughly 1670-1812. By the end of the 1600s, Gothic hand was old-fashioned while the newer Italian hand was trendy and rising in popularity.

According to Harvard's transcription guide, secretary hand features common peculiarities that modern readers must navigate. The long s looks like a lowercase f and may appear by itself, doubled, or paired with a standard s. The lowercase d retained its medieval form with a long, leftward looping ascender. These distinctive features of 18th century American writing make historical documents challenging without proper training. The uncrossed lowercase t remains surprisingly common and troublesome.

Colonial handwriting styles were determined by one's place in society, with different scripts indicating social status and occupation.

Round Hand and Copperplate: The American Evolution (1740s-1800s)

By the 18th century, handwriting began taking on styles more recognizable to modern readers. According to the North Carolina Historical Review Society, two varieties of "copperplate" style became common in 18th century American writing. Round hand, the bolder of the two, was considered appropriate for business use.

Benjamin Franklin executed the first colonial models of Italian, round, and secretary hands, publishing them in The American Instructor (Philadelphia, 1748). This marked a turning point in American handwriting education.

Mount Vernon's research notes that writing advisors recommended those destined for the clerk's desk or merchant's counting house adopt a bold and neat hand like round hand. Wills, deeds, and tax lists from the 18th century often survive in round hand.

Distinctive Letter Forms and Their Challenges

Specific letter characteristics make colonial handwriting particularly difficult for modern readers.

The Notorious Long S

The long s remains the most recognizable challenge in colonial documents. It appears in the middle of words rather than at the beginning or end. The word "Congress" might appear with a long s in the middle: "Congrefs." Double s combinations could use two long forms, two standard forms, or one of each.

Context helps determine whether you're seeing an f or a long s. If the letter appears in the middle of a word where an s makes sense, it's likely the long s.

Medieval D and Uncrossed T

The lowercase d retained its medieval form until the mid-18th century. The long, leftward looping ascender distinguishes it dramatically from modern d forms. Learning to recognize this distinctive loop is essential for reading pre-1750 documents.

The uncrossed lowercase t appears frequently in colonial writing. Without its crossbar, it resembles an l or i. Only context and comparison with other instances in the same document help identify these letters correctly.

Capitalization and Punctuation Chaos

According to DoHistory's guide, words that modern readers wouldn't capitalize often appear capitalized at the writer's whim or for emphasis. This arbitrary capitalization complicates sentence structure interpretation.

Writers of the colonial period loved dashes and flourishes, colons and semi-colons, often combined with dashes. This heavy punctuation creates visual complexity even when letter forms are clear.

Reading Techniques for Colonial Documents

Proven strategies help decipher challenging colonial handwriting.

Start With Later Colonial Documents

Colorado Mesa University's guide recommends beginning with more recent 19th century handwriting and working backward toward the colonial period. Late 1700s documents in round hand or copperplate are more accessible to modern readers than 1600s secretary hand.

This gradual approach builds familiarity with period letter forms before tackling the most challenging scripts.

Use Transcriptions as Learning Tools

The National Archives Revolutionary War Pension Files Transcription Mission offers valuable learning opportunities. The project aims to transcribe approximately 2.3 million original documents from more than 83,000 individual soldiers.

These files contain applications and records with valuable details about Revolutionary War veterans and their families. Working alongside existing transcriptions helps train your eye to recognize difficult letter forms.

The National Archives Revolutionary War Pension Files project contains 2.3 million documents available for transcription practice.

Compare Letter Forms Within Documents

Reed College's Indian Converts Collection guide emphasizes comparing unknown letters with known letters elsewhere in the same document. Each writer developed consistent letter forms and habits.

Find clearly written words containing the letters you're struggling to identify. Isolate those letter forms and compare them to the unclear instances. This comparative method reveals patterns specific to that writer's hand.

The Founding Fathers and Handwriting Quality

Not all colonial Americans wrote with equal skill. Even among the Founding Fathers, handwriting quality varied dramatically.

The Good: Thomas Jefferson

Monticello's research reveals that Jefferson's hand is relatively easy to read, especially after spending time with it. His writing is very legible, though he didn't capitalize the beginnings of sentences and maintained his own spellings for words like "knolege" or "recieve."

The Bad and Ugly: James Monroe

James Monroe, the fifth president, had handwriting so ugly that Jefferson's overseer Edmund Bacon once said "Mr. Jefferson and Mr. Madison both wrote a plain, beautiful hand, but you could write better with your toes than Mr. Monroe wrote."

This variation in writing quality reminds us that not all historical figures had beautiful penmanship. Difficult handwriting was as frustrating to contemporaries as it is to modern researchers.

Jefferson's Own Struggles

Even Jefferson found some colonial handwriting impossible. In 1816, he declined to read a handwritten manuscript, explaining that "the MS. [manuscript] is in a handwriting extremely difficult to me; and I shall read it with more pleasure, and more understandingly in print."

Colonial Genealogy Records and Resources

Multiple institutions provide access to colonial documents for family history research.

Major Online Collections

FamilySearch provides lists of the earliest records for the original thirteen British colonies. Virginia papers and colonial records dating to founding in 1607 appear at FamilySearch, Ancestry.com, and the Library of Virginia's Colonial Papers collection.

AmericanAncestors.org presents more than 1.4 billion records spanning twenty-two countries, making it one of the most extensive online collections of early American genealogical records.

Types of Colonial Documents

Colonial land records establish when and where ancestors lived and often contain relationship clues. Many colonies granted land to settlers as "patents," documents that have been widely microfilmed and digitized.

New England town records are some of the oldest and most extensive colonial genealogy records databases. Birth, marriage, and death records appear among these documents.

The Dutch Reformed Church, most prominent in New York, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania, adopted detailed record-keeping early. Ancestry.com includes two collections of colonial-era Dutch Reformed records covering both vital records and church membership.

Modern Transcription Technology for Colonial Documents

OCR technology handles colonial handwriting with varying success depending on script style and document condition.

When OCR Works Well

Later colonial documents written in standardized round hand or copperplate script from the mid-to-late 1700s often transcribe successfully with modern handwriting OCR. These scripts feature more regular letter forms that resemble 19th century handwriting styles, making colonial records OCR feasible for researchers working with documents from the Revolutionary War period and later.

Clear, well-preserved documents in good condition yield the best results. High-quality scans or photographs improve accuracy significantly.

Challenges With Earlier Scripts

Secretary hand from the 1600s and early 1700s presents greater challenges for OCR due to its distinctive letter forms. The long s, looping d, and uncrossed t require specialized training data that not all OCR systems possess.

Mixed hands that combine elements of different script styles add complexity. Writers who learned multiple systems sometimes blended them, creating unique combinations that require human interpretation.

The Hybrid Approach

For genealogy research involving mixed colonial document collections, a hybrid approach often works best. Use OCR for late 18th century documents in standardized scripts. Apply manual transcription skills to earlier secretary hand documents. Review all OCR output for accuracy, particularly with dates, names, and locations where transcription errors would undermine research value.

Modern OCR technology achieves high accuracy on late colonial documents in round hand or copperplate script from the 1750s-1800s period.

Preserving Family Colonial Documents

Proper handling ensures these fragile documents survive for future generations.

Physical Document Care

Colonial documents are typically 250-350 years old. Paper quality varies from high-quality rag paper that remains flexible to brittle documents that tear easily. Handle all colonial papers with clean, dry hands or cotton gloves.

Store documents flat in archival-quality, acid-free folders and boxes. Avoid folding, which stresses paper fibers at crease points. Keep in climate-controlled environments away from direct sunlight, extreme temperatures, and humidity fluctuations.

Digital Preservation First

Before attempting transcription or extensive handling, create high-resolution digital copies. This protects content even if original documents deteriorate further. Multiple backup copies in different locations provide redundancy against loss.

Digital preservation also enables sharing with family members, researchers, and transcription volunteers without risking original documents.

Conclusion

Colonial American handwriting from the 1600s and 1700s connects modern researchers to the founding generations of American history. These documents reveal where ancestors lived, whom they married, what property they owned, and how they participated in their communities. Understanding secretary hand, round hand, and the evolution of early American scripts unlocks this invaluable genealogical information.

Whether you're reading a single colonial land patent or transcribing an entire collection of Revolutionary War pension files, the techniques remain consistent. Learn distinctive letter forms, compare examples within documents, and practice with known transcriptions before tackling unknown texts.

HandwritingOCR offers practical transcription support for later colonial documents, particularly those in standardized round hand or copperplate scripts. Your colonial documents remain private throughout processing. Start transcribing your colonial American documents with free credits.