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GENEALOGY: Context important to analyzing colonial documents
By Tamie Dehler
TERRE HAUTE — This week’s column is a continuation of the discussion last week of Harriet Stryker-Rodda’s helpful little booklet titled Understanding Colonial Handwriting.
When analyzing a colonial document, the family researcher must know its historical context, the purpose of the document, the writing tools used during this time period, and the style of the individual scribe.
Author Harriet Stryker-Rodda discusses the tools used by the colonial scribes and how these affect the appearance of the finished document. Ink was made from galls (which had tannic acid), copper sulfate, and tree sap. This yielded a purple-black ink that now looks brown with age. This ink combined well with the paper. Ink make from lamp-black didn’t last long and tended to flake off the paper.
Paper before 1750 was imported from England and Europe, not made in the colonies. Its high rag content has allowed it to last far longer than the acidic paper we make today. However, old documents can be discolored, fall apart at the folds, and have brown age spots called foxing, which is due to deterioration from mold, humidity, and mildew.
The pen was a feather quill plucked from live birds. It was sharpened with a pen-knife into a writing edge. Early edges were chisel-shaped, but later they were made into a point. The chisel nib was square and allowed the writer to vary the width of the strokes in each letter, but writing was slow and inflexible. The pointed nib allowed for a faster and more flexible writing style. The hole in the nib acted as a reservoir for the ink to allow for a longer writing time with each dip into the ink. Federal census takers used quill pens through 1820. In 1830 the steel nibbed pen was invented. Some 1830 censuses were written with these and some with the old quills. After 1830, censuses were recorded using steel nibs.

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In the summer of 2003, as part of that year’s Lincoln Center Festival, members of the public were offered a guided walk around selected New York sites, beginning on Roosevelt Island and ending in the Chrysler Building. As they proceeded from site to site, they were invited to keep an eye out for angels. And at certain sites they did indeed get to see angel-actors, some with wings, some without, some gazing into the distance, some sleeping. At other sites there were merely traces of past angelic visits: feathers, for example.
The event was the brainchild of the British theater director Deborah Warner. In its first version, dating back to 1995 and as yet sans angels, it was set in a huge abandoned nineteenth-century London hotel; its goal was to evoke ghostly presences from the building’s past. In 1999 Warner presented a revised version with angels added. For the angels, said Warner, she was indebted to Rilke. “There’s a wonderful quote from Rilke which says that angels are uncertain if they are walking amongst the living or the dead.” In 2000 the revised version was exported to Perth, capital of Western Australia.
Responses of participants in the Angel Project varied widely. According to some, the presence of otherworldly beings changed the nature of their gaze, aestheticizing their view of the city. Others dismissed the project as mere Disneyfication, exploitation of a millenary craze for angels. Yet others were deeply moved. “They cried a lot,” said Warner, looking back on the 1999 London performance. “We put angels up at the top of the empty floors of the Euston Tower watching over London. And again, people’s response, terribly, terribly emotional. I think it’s about loss of innocence.”

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SHILLONG, India (AFP) — When politician Adolf Lu Hitler-Marak stands for election in an Indian hill state next month, even he may have a tough time standing out in a field of the most unusually named candidates.
Politician and school teacher Frankenstein Momin is also hoping not to scare away the voters in Meghalaya, especially when faced with competition from more benign-sounding candidates such as Hilarious Pochen and Billykid Sangma.
The state in India’s remote northeast goes to the polls on March 3, with more than 331 candidates jostling for around 60 seats in the assembly in the state capital Shillong.
Looking for re-election in his seat is Zenith Sangma, and also trying to outshine their rivals are Celestine Lyngdoh, Starfing Jove Langpen Pdahkasiej, Edstar Lyngdoh Nongbri and Moonlight Pariat.
Romeo Phira Rani and Darling Wavel Lamare are also busy trying to seduce the electorate, while Bison Paslen is locking horns with his rivals in Sutgna Shangpung constituency.
Forward Lyngdoh Mawlong is leading the charge in his constituency, while Admiral K Sangma is also setting sail for battle — as are H. Britainwar Dan and Bombersingh.
Meghalaya is one of three northeastern Indian states voting over the next fortnight.
With a population of 2.3 million, the state is a predominantly Christian area with Khasi as the main language.
English is spoken, but not very fluently — so people often name their children after words and famous people they have little familiarity with or understanding about.
“Often they don’t know the background of the names. They get attracted to exquisite names,” said the conservatively named David Reid Syiemlieh, a professor of history at the North Eastern Hill University in Shillong.
Hitler-Marak — a stocky, balding and moustached figure — said his parents probably had no idea the name was a big no-no.
“Maybe my parents liked the name. But I am not a dictator,” he once told AFP. “My parents did not know who Hitler was.”
In any case, the voters do not seem to mind — Hitler-Marak has been elected to public office before and has served as a state forestry minister, while Frankenstein Momin is a former state education minister.
“It doesn’t matter to us,” said local journalist Geoffrey Kharkongor.
“Parents may christen their children funny names, but as long as the candidates perform their duties, we have no problem.”
And there is a serious side to all this because the elections in Meghalaya and the other two northeastern states will be closely watched as an indicator of national trends.
India’s federal ruling Congress party currently leads the coalition government in Meghalaya — which means the “home of the clouds.”
The results are expected there on March 7.

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