Handwriting Opinion; W&D Card 1886

[jpop43]

To Net54’s Autograph Aficionados,

I am hoping to get some opinions on a sample of handwriting that’s been penned to a Wright and Ditson Sporting Goods card from 1886.

As my collecting interests have to do with 19th C. sporting goods and the related printed materials of period manufacturers, this piece was a fit on several levels. It’s on an official W&D post card, it’s from the 1880s, and it has baseball related content…i.e. baseball uniform belts.

I don’t have very much invested into it and am quite happy with what it is at face value. That said, I had become curious about the handwriting itself, more specifically, whose hand(s) the notations were made in.

After examining it for a couple days and securing a valuable and trusted initial opinion (thanks, Bruce), I simply want to get some additional eyes on it. At this point in time, it seems clear that the post card reflects the handwriting of two different people…

All the content on the front of the card and the address on the backside looks to have been done by one writer. In this instance, a Temple Craige who was George Wrights brother-in-law, the Secretary of W&D Sporting Goods, and…interestingly…part of the foursome who played the first game of golf in Boston in 1890 (with George Wright). His signature…at least his last name (Craige)…can be seen on the card underneath the ‘Yours Truly, Wright and Ditson’ line. Again, my thanks to bgar3 for this info.

But, there is another notation on the card…

On that backside where the address is written is a line that reads, ‘ Wright & Ditson…Feb.,1886 ‘. This notation was written vertically and is clearly in a different hand than that of the rest of the card. What I am interested in is whether or not the writer could have been George Wright.

As this is not a signature per se, I have been trying to compare the style, the construction, and slant of the writing to that of known samples from George Wright’s. In doing so, I found a number of examples that very closely match the way both the letters and the numbers were written here on this card. These examples span a period from the 1870s-1930s, so trying to ascertain something definitive…esp. because its not an actual signature…has been challenging.

Looking at various examples over time, its evident that Wright's execution of his last name...particularly the letters 'W' and 't'... were not always uniform or consistent. The balance of the name...'_righ_' looks like a match for many of the examples out there. Likewise, the way in which he would write an '8' and the 'D' in Ditson is very similar to other examples. In the next post, I added some of the examples I found for comparison.

As you may be able to tell, I am by no means an autograph expert, so I hope to get some feedback from the board membership. I thank you all in advance for your thoughts and input.

Best,
Jonathan
www.dugouttreasures.com