Determining Authorship and Chronology in Personal Archives

When you are organizing your family archives, determining who wrote what papers and when might not be immediately apparent. Finding out the authorship and date of a document or a letter may be essential to organizing it among your documents or understanding how it fits within a grouping. Archivists use several techniques to establish authorship. They include:

Handwriting comparisonsReferences to people, places, events, and datesLocation and ownership of a document or set of documentsProximity of other documentsAge and nature of paper and inkAge and nature of handwriting styleAge and nature of phrasing and abbreviationsResearching specific details mentioned in the documentComparing the document with new ones foundAsking others who may know more about the documents as a wholeOral traditionCommon sense

Similarly, there are several methods to determine the date of letters and documents, which include:

Looking for clues in surrounding documents, such as newspaper clippings or photographsEstimating dates by comparing documents from before and after the document in questionKeeping envelopes with letters to study postmarksEstimating dates by references to people, places, events, or seasonsLooking for an interruption within a group of documents to see if the document in question fills the gap

Creating family archives opens many mysteries for you to solve as you build a valuable resource of recorded information about your loved ones.

What methods do you use to determine authorship and chronology? 

Creating Family Archives: How to Preserve Your Papers and Photographs

By Margot Note

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