Hi, I read your question and took a look at your bible pages. I have a good amount of experience transcribing documents as a conservator. A handwriting analyst uses shape and trend points to indicate if a type of handwriting is by the same person. Normally they are looking references to education time period culture etc. (and in the case of forged documents hesitation points). You can always take it to an expert but I would not if its going to cost you because you already have dates within the context to tell you when things are written and you know the culture etc. In the case of you bible they would use distinctive letters to determine the number of people writing. For instance one of the individuals making entries writes the letter W very distinctively. Most people have a set of letters they write slightly differently and with characters to either, for instance I write T, F and H in way that is very distinctive to myself. However it is possible for individuals to write even these letters similar to family members and particularly in the 19th century when many people learned how to write through book, many members of a family would have similar writing. Your bible looks like most of the entries were written by the same person or a two people of the same generation there are a couple entries where the letter M is written very differently from the rest and this might indicate a second or third individual making entries. The content of the pages is really where all of your evidence is going to come from and in reality it would be very difficult to conclusively tell you who was making the entries in the bible without have numerous pieces of correspondence from different member of this family who would have been in contact with the bible for a handwriting expert to same Joe X wrote these because of these points and trends in his correspondence verses everyone else.
It might be helpful to sit down one day and transcribe the pages if you already haven't. I find the process of constantly re-reading and writing out what someone in the past wrote normally makes me re-evaluate the what I looking out relate whats going on in the document to what information I have. You will probably be able to connect many of the entries to genealogical information you already have leaving a remainder of people in the bible who you know you have not previously connected to any generation or whom you had but didn't realize it or did not have as much information on them as in the bible like a birth date of circa 1850 where in the bible it might say that person was born August 29, 1849. etc. I hope this helps
TR
> Date: Fri, 11 Feb 2011 16:16:08 -0500
> From: [log in to unmask]
> Subject: Re: [VA-ROOTS] Need help with an off the wall question........--handwriting request
> To: [log in to unmask]
>
> Nel
> Is there any chance you can get to the original pages? That would be the
> easiest as the colors of the writing are probably different. I know not
> colored ink or pencils but pencils tend to be different color when you write
> with them.
> Doug
>
> On Thu, Feb 10, 2011 at 8:01 PM, nelhatch <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
>
> > HATCHER website: http://hatcherfamilyassn.com
> > HALL DNA project:
> > http://homepages.rootsweb.com/~nhatcher/hall/HDNAtest.htm
> > When confronted by a difficult problem, you can solve it more easily by
> > reducing it to the question, "How would the Lone Ranger have handled this?"
> > - Unknown
> >
> > Greetings, All........
> >
> > I have a very ugly bible record composed of 4 pages that can be seen
> > here.......
> > http://hatcherfamilyassn.com/getperson.php?personID=I41975&tree=WmTheIm Click the pages for a larger view.
> >
> > There's no question a number of people made entries and not always grouped
> > neatly together. My problem is that earlier researchers have attempted to
> > identify the writer of each entry in order to connect them into the family
> > tree. My suspicion is that there have been some errors in this process and
> > that a few people have been wrongly attached to the wrong family.
> >
> > Sooooo! I'm wondering if it would be helpful to have a professional
> > handwriting analyst study those pages to sort out who wrote what. And it
> > would seem I would need someone who is skilled in analyzing old style
> > handwriting.
> >
> > Has anyone ever done this or have knowledge of reputable analysts? If so,
> > can you recommend a good analyst and provide a rough estimate of cost per
> > hour?
> >
> > Thanks for any guidance!
> >
> > Nel Hatcher
> >
> >
> > To subscribe, change options, or unsubscribe, please see the instructions
> > at
> > http://listlva.lib.va.us/archives/va-roots.html
> >
>
>
>
> --
> Douglas Burnett
> Satellite Beach
> FL
>
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