Recently from one of the many genealogy blogs I follow, I saw this introduction:
If You Want That Signature Pedigree But Don’t Want To Learn How to Make One…”
I was intrigued by the word “Signature” and so I looked at the site to see what it was all about. Oh, duh! I thought. Your families signatures in pedigree form. What a novel idea!
I then wondered how many signatures of ancestors can I go back, which brought me to my 6th great grandfather.
Benjamin, SR., kept a book of his finances and such, so there are many of his signatures, not all of them match. That is because he had is indentured servants [people he paid for their boat ride to America and they worked for him to repay the debt], who would sign for him. So how would I know which signature is his?
Then as I am writing this, it occured to me that I had discovered a document that was kept at an historical society, his death bed will. I am still investigating it, because unlike many of the other documents of the itme discovered, this particular document had lines on it – like our current notebook paper. So is this a ligitiment document or is it one that was written from another document?
Perhaps there was a marriage document or a document of one of his cartography’s, or a document he signed to be a witness. These are a few options I will be searching.
Where can you find document with signatures?
- wills
- birth records
- death records
- court documents
- marriage certificates
- witness signatures for others – this will take a little more investigating
- bank records
- war records
- enlistment documents
- voting registrations
These are a few to help you get started with your Signature Pedigree, should you devide to create one.
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