My 2xgreat grand uncle George Thomas Stocking (1862-1947) was the first of his ten siblings to be able to read and write, although his signature is invariably shaky. He and his wife Fanny are said to have had 17 children, but suffered the loss of seven of them as children, and two more to WW1. As a proud father, he made a point of witnessing the marriages of most of his surviving children, signing his name on their marriage records as he did on his own in 1882. However, another hand appears to have completed the 1911 census, and in 1921 he ‘makes his mark’ so he may not have been that literate. This post shows his signature from a number of records from 1882 onwards.