Article (4): wedding signatures

Slight of hand

The occupations and writing skills captured on wedding certificates provide the basis for social analysis. Genealogy extends this process by supporting social mapping involving multiple generations of the families involved. This research also highlights the extent to which fathers, on occasion, appeared to elevate their ranking above that found elsewhere. This may illustrate jockeying for claimed social superiority between the two families. Thus, the certificates provide possible insights into how the two groups behaved on the day and perhaps after, once the couple had settled into their home.

A study of the signatures made by interested parties on the wedding certificate offers further human insight. The certificates used belonged to the last decades of the nineteenth century. They show the extent to which successive governments had expanded literacy into the population. Almost every bride and groom could sign their name by this time. More often, witnesses, a generation older, signed their presence using a cross. Examination of the signatures, however, shows significant variations in quality. Some delivered beautiful, cursive, clear signatures adhering to the line. Others did not, their names differing in size and position.

Signing their certificate represented a moment of personal and social stress for the new partners. This might affect the success with which people who wrote little applied their names to paper. Some brides, eager to conform, used their new surname, but had to supply their maiden version alongside. Despite illustrating this human drama, the quality of wedding signatures also appears to correlate with social position. At this period, labouring people would still have had little need for constant literacy. Their wedding signatures appear to support this, for writing skills decline among people of this group.

For more on rural education in the area, go here. Also, see here and here.