Literacy was uncommon among the German-speaking settlers of frontier SC and GA. This was one reason that clergymen were desired so strongly: not only could they read the Bible, but they had the other "clerical" skill of writing, and could be trusted to draft a document in the way the buyer and seller desired it. The parties to the transaction, and their witnesses, normally put their individual marks on it. Later (sometimes much later, and sometimes not at all) the original document was presented to a local J.P., and one of the witnesses attested verbally that he had seen the buyer and seller make their marks. So the J.P. put a legal seal (LS) by those two marks on his own Fair Copy of the original document, took that one to the Register, who entered his own copy into the official record book. In some times-and-regions, the J.P.s (and Registers) attempted to replicate the nature of the marks; in others they just entered (X) or (his mark) to show that it was a mark rather! than a signature. If a person had the skill of signing his own name (or--rarely--her own name), he did it every time, because it was a matter of great pride. The British legal term for the individually-identifiable mark was sigil. A signature was a special case of a sigil, and signatures became more common towards the close of the 18th century. Even in small communities, there were often two or more persons with the same name whose signatures might look similar (unless one was in German Gothic script, the other in British copperplate). Then the older one might add "Sr." and the younger one "Jr.", implying no particular relationship between them. This also became confusing, because Jr. might die or move away and an older one move in, so old Sr. is suddenly a new Jr. The next step was to add a distinctive ornate squiggle beneath the signature, in order to prove which of the same-named persons had signed that particular document. John Hancock and other signers of the Declaration of Independence used florid squiggles for the purpose of identifying themselves. The squiggle even has its own legal term: it's a "paraph", as I disc! overed quite recently! If you have an old legal dictionary, or even an unabridged one, check out the official meaning of "paraphernalia" while on that page--it's an entertaining entry. Some of the late 18th-c. and early 19th-c. deeds, in Fair Copy or registered copy, use the abbreviation "s" before a list of names. The "s" is for sigil, which implies either a mark or a signature--but one that the witness testified was personally made by the named person. It does not imply that the parties were, or were not, literate. Harriet Imrey himrey@ntelos.net