Good morning as we move towards Thanksgiving and the end of yet another month. I won't be posting on Thanksgiving Day of course and want to wish you all a wonderful relaxing day where you and yours can be truly thankful for family, friends, and freedom. And, for those of you who are football fanatics ... may your favorite team win! As announced last Monday, today ends the posting of my weekly "puzzlers" for a time. Thanks for all who ventured guesses on the final puzzler which I'll discuss next. Hopefully, after the new year, I can start these up again and thanks for all your guesses over the past many months! My puzzler for this past week was: If a person in the earlier times signed with an (X) did this mean that the individual could write, could not write or either. Our first response would be "they can't write!" Well, not necessarily. Sometimes people signed with an (X) for several reasons, one of which you might not have thought of. First of course, would be a physical handicap that kept them from signing; Health - too weak, a deathbed will (always requiring witnesses), even blindness. But there was another obscure reason that goes back to "olden times". Remembering back in your history classes; what was always required to accompany a royal proclamation or order from the king or ruling authority? It wasn't legal until the SEAL was placed on the document. Anyone could have falsely signed a document, but if the seal was on it, it was considered legit. Now in early America and in Kentucky, few people had their own rings to place a seal on a document to make it authentic. But ....... they used what they had. The signature wasn't as important as the seal so to mimic a seal, they put an (X) on the line. This was rare but did happen. I found one of our family who was a direct descendant of an English family of some note and I KNEW the individual could write; I'd seen his signature - beautiful handwriting and it was his writing, not a clerk's. But on a transfer of land it was signed with an (X) "his mark". He wanted it to be official. So, though normally when we see an (X) instead of a signature; it does mean they couldn't write. But not always!!!! Have a great day and I'll be back tomorrow with a post on Monroe Co tidbits of news from the past. Sandi SCKY Links: http://www.public.asu.edu/~moore/Gorin.html GGP: http://ggpublishing.tripod.com/