Shoeless Joe Jackson Auto- Fake?

[Jobu]

What is the reasoning arguing that they are in the same hand? Any idea? Signed at the same time is believable, but to my untrained eye the signature and the Alexandria line look totally different. I would also add that there appears to have been a lot more pressure (and therefore ink) applied in the Jackson auto than in the location and date - yet another thing that could be explained both ways, but a difference nonetheless.

One way to get at this would be to look through the albums for Frank Smith's writing --- perhaps when the balance of the Cleveland album makes it to Rhys we will be fortunate to see some of Smith's writing it in.

The Jacksons were married in 1908 so Mrs. Jackson may have been present, but there are a lot of differences between the wife-signed doc and Alexandria (the e and the a's really jump out).

[Peter_Spaeth]

Originally Posted by Jobu

What is the reasoning arguing that they are in the same hand? Any idea? Signed at the same time is believable, but to my untrained eye the signature and the Alexandria line look totally different. I would also add that there appears to have been a lot more pressure (and therefore ink) applied in the Jackson auto than in the location and date - yet another thing that could be explained both ways, but a difference nonetheless.

One way to get at this would be to look through the albums for Frank Smith's writing --- perhaps when the balance of the Cleveland album makes it to Rhys we will be fortunate to see some of Smith's writing it in.

The Jacksons were married in 1908 so Mrs. Jackson may have been present, but there are a lot of differences between the wife-signed doc and Alexandria (the e and the a's really jump out).

Hopefully Thomas can answer this at least for himself. I really am not sure.

[Mark17]

Originally Posted by Jobu

The Jacksons were married in 1908 so Mrs. Jackson may have been present, but there are a lot of differences between the wife-signed doc and Alexandria (the e and the a's really jump out).

The signature is clearly either Joe's or someone (perhaps his wife) trying to make it look like Joe's, so most letters will be unnatural scrawls. On all of the authentic sigs, the final "n" is just a trailing line. But on some wife signed ones, it looks more like a wave, similar to the "n" in "Alexandria."

Since Joe apparently only began drawing his name after he met his wife, and since she signed things for him, it seems clear that the image Joe used to copy from was created by his wife. In other words, Joe's authentic signatures would be his best attempt to copy what his wife had written for him to memorize.

So, where we see differences between Joe's genuine signature and wife-signed things, the differences would be his wife's natural handwriting coming through. The wavy final "n" being the most prominent example.