Henry Knox's handwriting

I am working on an interesting project for the Society of the Cincinnati (from now on, referred to as SocCin because writing the full name is tiring). I am assisting in the creation of a finding aid for the archives of the General and State societies for the organization. This pretty much involves entering specific criteria such as noting the folder in which the document is located, the title of the document, the date it was written, and a description of its contents. This project is quite fascinating to me because it gives me the opportunity to handle eighteenth and nineteenth century documents and I get some experience doing archival work. When I originally considered attending library school, I hoped to be an archivist. However, U of MD required a 3.5 GPA in order to apply to the archives track, but I missed the cut off by .3. So I ended up applying for the general track with a focus on academic libraries. I still hope to have a job that involves working with eighteenth century materials since it's my favourite era.

The fascinating part of this project is being able to read and decipher the letters that the men wrote to each other, and to read about some of their concerns. Much of the earlier documents from the 1780s are concerned with the pay that the soldiers were supposed to receive from the government. At this time, Congress had very little money to pay the soldiers that fought in the Revolutionary War so part of the reason why the Society of the Cincinnati was formed was so that it could act as a lobbying agent for these soldiers. However, as time went by and the soldiers were paid, the letters become slightly more mundane. Most of the ones I've worked on so far involves details about the delegates who were chosen to represent their state at the General Society meetings, held every three years.

Another interesting aspect of reading these letters is seeing how handwriting and how letter-writing conventions changed. For example, instead of writing the addressee at the top of the page, that information was often included on the bottom left-hand side. Example:

Dear Sir,

Blah blah blah blah, blah blah blah

Your most humble and obdt:
Signature (with a flourish)

His Excellency,
General Washington.


It seems that the convention changed to its familiar form sometime in the 19th century. Apparently, lined paper also became common in the mid-19th century. Before then, they used different types of material for writing, such as rag pulp. An amusing letter I encountered was one written by Henry Knox to another Society Member (whose name I've forgotten). His handwriting was simply atrocious, but in a funny way. Knox was definitely a person who could have used a secretary. Jane Austen must have somehow acquired a sample of Knox's writing and based Mr. Bingley's writing on that. Still, looking at past examples of handwriting makes me wish that my cursive writing was a bit neater. I should like to write "with a fair hand". With the decline of cursive (and of handwriting in general), I wonder if people will be able to read these important documents in the future? Time will tell, I suppose.