Written in History

The Scranton Penmanship Collection gives us insights into the rich heritage of American cursive.

- NICHOLAS ADAMS

An extraordinary collection of 19th and 20th century penmanship has recently been assembled and is still growing at the University of Scranton in Scranton, Pennsylvania. It is housed in the McHugh Family Special Collections under the A care of its director Michael Knies, in the Weinberg Library. The collection, almost all of which is digitized and can be consulted online, allows one to trace the history of American handwriting, from the early formalized script of Platt Rogers Spencer (1800-1864) to the more simplified forms of the Palmer Method (developed by A.N. Palmer, 1860-1927), on which many U.S. adults were raised.

The period between the introduction of widespread universal education in the 1830s and the popular diffusion of the typewriter in the 1880s was the golden age of American handwriting and ornamental lettering. Something remarkable happened in those years. Introduced in elementary schools, pen skills became an accepted route for economic improvement: good, clear handwriting (and a pleasant manner) could allow a farmhand to become a clerk or a kitchen maid to become a teacher, and good handwriting was considered a sign of moral rectitude and virtue.

Today, as our national "handwriting project" continues to lose steam in our highly digitized world, it is all the more important to look back and consider the remarkable achievements in our past. Some things have been gained, let's suppose, but something else was almost lost. The Scranton Penmanship Collection attempts to preserve the heritage of American cursive.