Your Ancestor’s Handwriting

If you believe that something can be learned by handwriting analysis, then you might want to read this article, What the graphoanalyst saw, Handwriting offers clues to personality, by Amanda Cuda, in the Connecticut Post Online. It looks at a lady, Irene Lambert, that analyzes handwriting, and one thing I found interesting was that they apply it to genealogy, to help develop a personality of your ancestors.

Excerpts from the article:

A person’s handwriting, like a person, is complicated. It can tell you volumes about an individual — some of it contradictory, some of it vague, none of it completely black and white. Lambert knows that no person contains just one quality. That comes through in his or her handwriting.

“One trait never stands alone,” she said.

Lambert is a graphologist, the blanket term used for people who analyze handwriting, examining penmanship quirks such as slants and letter size and using them as a sort of personality profile. More specifically, she’s a graphoanalyst, a title given to those certified through the International Graphoanalysis Society, a New Kensington, Pa.-based agency that trains people in handwriting analysis…..

Her other passion is using handwriting analysis to add dimension to genealogy studies. This involves studying a relative’s handwriting for clues to his or her personality, which can tell you a lot more about where you come from than a simple family tree, Lambert said.

It’s an interesting angle to genealogy that I never thought about. If you’re lucky, you have a lot of documents that your ancestors signed or wrote. Might be something to look into. Genealogy Graphoanalysis is apparently an actual field or subset of Graphoanalysis. This is the lady’s homepage mentioned above.

Note: Graphology is the generic term when talking about handwriting analysis. Graphoanalysis refers to a system mentioned in the article above, and is a trademarked term of the IGAS – International Graphoanalysis Society

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