Thank you to Linda Teather, Bill Moore, Crystal Lorimor, Kristin Rapinac, Sue Tolbert, and so many of you joining us and engaging in the conversation so actively today during Emma Cox’s live presentation and online in the comments below. Your generous ❤️s, restacks, and shares have helped turn this publication into the supportive community we all want to see. It’s been an extraordinary year for us here at Projectkin and in this fantastic series.
After our conversations on Kathy’s Corner about correspondences and postcards, it was fitting that today’s program for Emma Explores would center on signatures.
Signatures are one of those elements you rarely pay much attention to during the process of family history research. This presentation reminds us to look closely not only to validate the documented person or event, but also to see who else was involved. As you’ll see in the presentation, Emma shares creative ideas for creating customized artifacts, such as mugs and teatowels, to engage loved ones and family members in your ancestors’ stories.
Inspiration, just in time for holiday gift-giving. (Or… milestone birthdays, celebrations, and other events.) When you think of these kinds of objects as a gateway to family history, simple pieces could be a good investment.
Our discussion included several audience members sharing their own stories about signatures and family members’ handwriting. Feel free to share more in the comments and links to your own posts, notes, or external articles relevant to handwriting and family members’ signatures.
In each of these programs, Emma generously shares both her slides and the resources she used to compile the presentation.
Project Ideas & Tips
Organizing signature files into folders on a drive helps you associate relevant context with each file. Try to reference or mirror that organization in your paper files.
Create a family tree or other listing of your “My Eight” or “My Sixteen” grandparents or great-grandparents.
Create an assembly of different implementations of common names, like a surname or shared given names.
Use these collections of signatures to customize common objects as gifts, for example:
Tea towels
Mugs
Coasters
Resources
Canva.com offers many features to free account holders. Paid accounts give you a full range of functions. Tip: You can use Canva to create your design, then select your printers based on price, shipping economies, or to take advantage of local vendors.
Wikipedia and Wikimedia for images and research sources.
Family wills (E. W. Cox’s was from the London Metropolitan Archives).
Visits to and downloads from local and national archives.
Snagit software on Windows or Preview (standard with MacOS) for screen grabs.
Printster.co.uk for creating coasters, for example, for local delivery in the UK. Save on both shipping and duties by considering printing or fabrication sources near the destination for your delivery.
Journeys into Genealogy
Many of you will already know Emma for her Journeys into Genealogy podcast, where she interviews guests worldwide. As Substack publishers and readers, you can explore her full catalog and get previews of different episodes by subscribing to her publication:
I know Emma - Journeys into Genealogy joins me in hoping you can make it for our program and the Substack live preview next month. You can see all recordings in this series on Projectkin.org/emma-explores.
