Spencerian: the ornamental American hand, 1850–1925

Platt Rogers Spencer was born in East Fishkill, New York, on 7 November 1800.^[1] His family moved west in 1810, a journey of 51 days by wagon to Jefferson, in Ashtabula County, Ohio.^[2] For the last twenty years of his life he taught his penmanship at a log-cabin seminary near his home.^[3] He founded the first Spencerian Commercial College, in Pittsburgh, in 1852,^[4] and helped build a network of forty such colleges across the United States and Canada.^[5] His students went on to found the Bryant & Stratton business schools, which carried the hand into factories, mills and warehouses.^[6]

Spencer died on 16 May 1864.^[7] The Spencerian Key to Practical Penmanship, prepared by H. C. Spencer,^[8] went to press after his death.^[9] Adopted in the 1850s as the standard hand taught across the country, Spencerian held that place until the first decade of the twentieth century.^[10]

The Key sets the slant at fifty-two degrees.^[11] A shade on a straight line starts heavy at the top and thins toward the ruled line,^[12] and a capital is usually shaded on one curve only.^[13] Not every Spencerian page is shaded: many accountants and book-keepers preferred to write without it.^[14]