Tom, The clerk copied original records such as wills & deeds into bound books. This would include signatures. I did find a deed once where it looked to me that the grantor also signed the bound copy. This was very unusual. It was a German signature and written under it was "his hand". I remember asking some of my peers & they suggested that the old German gentleman may not have trusted the English clerks - no proof however - just theory. Remember that wills did not get recorded until after someone died. Some counties kept the original wills & filed them with other loose papers in probate packets. If he signed by mark he either could not write or was very old & feeble as I have seen instances when a man signed his name when he was younger but not when he became old & weak. Shirley On Mon, 05 Apr 1999 13:27:27 -0400 "Thomas Dirksen" <[email protected]> writes: > >Got a question for those more in the know on wills and legal >things------"signed A. Nevil (his Mark)". Does this mean that >Alexander himself wrote the entire will in the will book of Jackson >County? Or, did someone copy the will into the will book for him to >sign just his name? Or did the clerk just copy the will along with >the signatures and the will is out there somewhere? Does "his mark" >adjacent the signature "A. Nevil" mean that he could not write? >Or----? > >As to the handwriting, and not being any sort of expert, the writing >is neatly done. The N's throughout the text are usually different but >not always from the N in the signature. The A's look similar as do >the other letters in the name to those of the text. But the >Signatures of Shoulders and Gaines seem to be done in the same pen asa >the rest of the will. In conclusion, HELP! Hope you had an enjoyable >Easter day. tom ___________________________________________________________________ You don't need to buy Internet access to use free Internet e-mail. Get completely free e-mail from Juno at http://www.juno.com/getjuno.html or call Juno at (800) 654-JUNO [654-5866]