On a recent visit to Iowa my husband Jim found the gravestone of Russell William Volckmann  that I have written about several times in this blog.  MacArthur Left But Volckmann Remained

The headstone is located in Springdale Cemetery, Clinton, Iowa (FindAGrave location).  There are several Volckmanns buried in the same general area around the General’s headstone.

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Handwriting Traits In Your Ancestor’s Penmanship

After eighteen months of training, I became a Certified Handwriting Analyst through the International Graphoanalysis Society in 1987.  I had always been fascinated by the quirks I could see in other people’s handwriting, and as always, I wanted to know what it all meant.  Loops, curls, dots and cross bars.  Why did my handwriting look different than everyone else’s.

It was my mother’s penmanship I was exposed to early on and in great quantity. She signed the report cards, wrote letters to everyone in the family, and always in a beautiful script probably drilled into her in her formative years in grade school and high school.  I believe her form of handwriting might have been called the Palmer method which was developed as a uniform way of writing for business.  

The thing to remember about handwriting is that it is actually brain writing.   Your hand doesn’t do the thinking of course, it’s your mind that controls the way your hand (or any cursive writing method) transfers the information to the paper.

Crossing those T’s and dotting those I’s

Look at how you cross your T’s (lower case or capitals) to see where you put the crossbar.  Is it low, in the middle, high on the stem of the letter, or way above the stem, just kind of ‘floating’ up there?  To a graphoanalyst,  all of those locations mean something: goals.  As you can imagine, the low crossbar denotes low goals; in the middle denotes reasonable ones, high shows the person sets high goals. The one’s floating above…perhaps those are very high and not so reasonable or attainable.

You may not usually pay much attention to how you dot your lower case i, or j, but there are several traits we look for.  A “tick” or almost a check mark look could mean that the person could be quick to anger. The harder the person writes on the paper shows the depth and length of time the person might hold that anger. It could be a small irritation they will get over quickly, or along with several other traits we evaluate, it could mean you need to watch out for someone who could fly off the handle. Do you make a little circle above your dotted letters?  That could mean you have an idiosyncrasy of some sort. Big circles = big idiosyncrasies, with the converse being the opposite trait.  

Writing that looks flowing and with lots of extra loops and curls could mean the person had grown up in an era when life was more flowery (like the Victorian era) and “gilded” where it was all part of the person‘s personae to show good breeding with even their handwriting.

What We Don’t Know or Can’t Tell

The really intriguing thing about handwriting is what you can’t determine from just looking at it. You cannot determine the writer’s gender.  You may be able to tell what their health is like if it’s somewhat ‘squiggly’ if the writers handwriting was once more firm and controlled.  Additionally, you are not able to determine someone’s  age by looking at their writing. Of course, there’s exceptions to that rule, for instance if what you see is just scribbling it could be a very small child, but at the same time it could also be someone who has limited mental capacity.

One of the most scary handwriting is by persons who are serial murderers or other individuals who have committed violent crimes.  Their writing looks very “muddy”, and possibly very heavy or dark, depending on their writing instrument. Many times, an analyst will ask that an exemplar be done using a pencil or a ballpoint pen to get the most clear writing to examine.  Using other types of writing tools like roller ball or felt pen will not give a clear stroke to analyze.

Every single stroke of the pen tells the analyst a story they can picture in their mind and use to compose a personality report for business or even marital compatibility.  

Carol is not currently taking new clients at this time.  
© Carol Yates Wilkerson, 2010. Use of this article is not permitted without permission from the author.

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Sentimental Sunday

If you read the title of this article, it might be a bit misleading in that I was able to get the photo below with just Google. I did use SnagIt (which I LOVE!) too to capture the image.  I am not real adept at using Google with SnagIt,  so that’s why you see that silly magnifying glass thing in the picture.  Google presents the opportunity by supplying the street view; SnagIt makes it easy to capture.  No doubt there are other ways.

My Grandpa Elvin “Al” and Grandma Lillian “Eppy” (Epstein)  Moline lived on the second floor in this building probably from the 1950′s to the late ’60′s.  The address is 1105 Spring Street, Seattle, WA.  I think it’s called the Decatur Condos now.  They had the apartment at the bottom of the photo, which included the small balcony.  Grandma was a sun worshiper, so no doubt she was delighted to have a way to get outside.  Their apartment was a corner one, so the three windows from left to right shows the size of their one bedroom abode.

The far left window was their bedroom whose window was really a cool patio door that opened to the balcony. In the middle was the living room, and I think one side of those windows might have opened to the balcony also.  The kitchen windows are last to the right of the three.  My brother has the drop leaf table that used to sit in front of  the kitchen window.

This apartment had an effect on me I can’t quite explain.  We lived in an old farmhouse in Tumwater.  This apartment was the opposite side of the coin and seemed very posh to me.  A couch on one wall in the living room, and two club chairs with a beautiful wooden secretary faced it from the opposite wall.  There were nice paintings on the walls and tasteful knick knacks scattered here and their, but not overdone.  Grandpa Molines’s father was a furniture maker, so I suppose an appreciation for fine furniture rubbed off on him.  Grandma (she was my mom’s step mother) was a bridge player and a registered nurse, so she was very social and was used to being with people all the time, from all walks of life.  Some of the jokes she told would make you blush.

Last, but not least, was one more attraction for Dave and I when we visited the grandparents in this building.  We were always pumped to get in the elevator and ride to…the second floor.  That was pretty anticlimatic, so we would beg Mom to let us go “exploring”.   We made a beeline right for the elevator and rode it up and down lots of times before we saw the same people more than once.  They gave us the “eye” and we knew we had to give up our fun before someone reported us to the office.  We never once did anything destructive or even thought to do that.  We were just kids out of our element. Good times! Good memories!

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Through sheer luck and a lot of networking, I’ve been able to obtain quite a few tombstone pictures for our family history. Two of them are for a father and son, David and William Livingston Holmes and they are my subjects for Tombstone Tuesday.

David Holmes

Information on the father, David Holmes is a little sparse and not all documented, but it’s most likely he was born in Virginia circa 1777.  He was an older brother to my fourth Great Grandfather, John Holmes who was born in 1784. I am not even sure if these two men were full brothers, or half brothers, but John’s letter of 1872, which I have in my possession, claims him as a brother.  David Holmes died 15 September 1869 in DeKalb County, Missouri.

William Livingston Holmes

David’s oldest son and child was William Livingston Holmes who was born 30 May 1807 in Overton County, Tennsessee. William and his wife, as well as three of their children were members of the 1843 Oregon Trail wagon train that arrived in Oregon City, Oregon in November of that year. William was the first sheriff of Clackamas County, Oregon serving from 1845 to 1852.

For more information on this family please read:

iPentimento|Genealogy and History » William L. Holmes Family Files

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Capt. Thomas Poindexter 1733 – 01 Jan 1807

The photo of Capt. Thomas Poindexter’s tombstone in Louisa County, VA was sent to me by Tom Hobbs, an archeologist who has been working at the Broaddus Flats site for many years now. I had written to him to thank him for creating the website VirginiaDigs.net and was pleasantly surprised to get a very nice email from Tom, with the Poindexter tombstone photo as well as photos of St. Peter’s and Slash Churches.

My membership in the DAR is through Capt. Poindexter for his service in the NC Militia, List F–No. 2, dated Jan. 1777, # 2044.  Thomas’ second wife was Elizabeth Pledge and I descend through their son Archibald Pledge Poindexter and his wife Rebecca Flynn.

I’m participating in Tombstone Tuesday for 29 Dec 2009. If you would like to know more about this weekly theme please visit Geneabloggers or Gene@pedia here.

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