There’s a handwritten record copy of a will from the 1740s in Virginia where the name Catherine is consistently written “Cathering.” While the spelling could have been based on how the name was pronounced, it’s important to remember that the handwritten record copy of the will I was looking at was made by looking at the original handwritten copy. I do not know what that document looked like and it is no longer extant.
So that handwriting I’m seeing in that copy of the will in a record book is the clerk’s rendition of how the original looked (or how he thought it looked).
It’s a variant on the telephone game where a story is passed around a group of people and the final person hearing it tells it. The last retelling often is significantly different from the original version. No reason why that can’t happen to an extent with handwriting as well…particularly when it is difficult to read.
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