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It may not be a question of the literacy of the people concerned but of the parish clerk or clergyman who wrote up the register. We counted 15-20 different ways that my mother's maiden name Faulkner got spelt in the 17th to 19th centuries. At that period the name was as spoken, not as written. Shakespeare spelt his name several different ways in surviving signatures. The literacy level of a parish clerk may not have been high: it was probably not well paid. It is thus a question of how far his descendants were able to send their children to school.
Peter KIng
On 13 August 2015 at 16:47 David Alan Gatley <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
Hi
I have a conundrum regarding one branch of my family I think I've traced back to the early 1700s.
The problem however which makes me think I might have made an error somewhere is that whilst the family in the mid 1700s were literate (one being a Parish Clerk) those in the mid 1800s (a hundred years later) were illiterate who spelt their surname in various ways (Hughson, Hueson, Hewson).
How common was it for literacy skills to be lost to future generations? Am I taking a far to modern view of literacy to assume that once a family is literate the skills will be passed on the children? I have other ancestors who were wheelwrights but I can't make a wheel. Were the skills of reading and writing treated the same until early 1800s? Skills learned to a job but not necessarily passed on.
Of course I may not have identified the correct ancestral line but the dates and people fit.
Any comments?
David
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------Dr David Alan Gatley129 Ridgway RoadStoke-on-TrentST4 2BY
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