His Mark - Genealogists' Forum

Phoenix · #1 31-08-13, 14:02

Several of my Alborowe ancestors have left wills.

William Alborowe, yeoman of Sharrington, Norfolk makes his will 22 April 1639. It is proved within a short space of time.

He signs it with his initials. WA.

But they are upside down!

I have a photocopy of the actual will and there seems little doubt that this is the same man who was churchwarden over thirty years earlier.

I get the impression of someone who is bright enough to have seen and recognised his initials, but only when he was looking across a table at a document someone else was holding.

Has anyone else come across this?

Olde Crone · #2 31-08-13, 17:40

Perhaps he was in extremis when he signed and wasn't bothered about which way up the document was!

My Hugh Holden was churchwarden for 22 years and in that time, signed and spelled the Holden bit in five different ways.........

OC

Phoenix · #3 31-08-13, 19:03

I did wonder about that to start with, OC, but that puts the letters in the wrong order, and he'd been writing his initials upside down for forty years.

Don't start me about spellings though. NROCAT demands exact searches, and guessing all the different ways the name can be written is proving deeply challenging. Especially as there is a village of the same name.

Olde Crone · #4 31-08-13, 20:19

My late, beloved A2A, wasn't case sensitive and every time I searched for "Holden" I got every court, meeting, party and bunch of flowers that had been "holden" in the last thousand years!

OC

Phoenix · #5 31-08-13, 21:13

I don't think our ancestors had any thought for the confusion their names might cause.

Shona · #6 01-09-13, 07:45

They could write? They had wills? You lucky people. My Gaelic-speaking, illiterate, hovel-dwelling ag labs left little trace, unless they were sheep-stealing, grave-robbing makers of illicit whisky!

Phoenix · #7 01-09-13, 08:06

William had a shrewd head on his shoulders. His mark was more than a cross. He named all his grandchildren. He held property in more than one village and the Norfolk Record Office probably has more information on him than I will ever be able to extract. His son was literate - but didn't have the same liberal attitude towards women. This may have been a product of the Civil War and all the upheavals, but he names son in laws, not daughters and just grandsons.

Phoenix · #8 01-09-13, 08:08

Oh, and yes I do realise I am lucky in having a quarter of my ancestors coming from Norfolk. Records for Surrey and Dorset came as a rude shock for the paucity of the information.

#9 01-09-13, 15:18

Sobs .. wish I could track the right Norwich maiden Mary Callow Phoenix .. if you ever have a spare century let me know, as you are obviously an expert on Norfolk research .. sobs some more .. and wishes her hue would loose it's green tinge ..siggh

Olde Crone · #10 01-09-13, 19:55

*Pats Julie comfortingly*

Wills aren't all they are cracked up to be, you know. My 4 x GGF was a wealthy farmer with about 1000 acres and fingers in all sorts of other pies. He had seven children as well, so I was really looking forward to his Will...

..it came and it said, in its entirety...

"I leave everything to my neighbour Mary Hammond for her kindness and care of me".

HUH.

OC