By LaRae Free Kerr, M. Ed

“Sign here, here, here and here,” said the loan officer.

“Initial every page, where you see the little arrows.” My husband was turning green. His signature wavered a little more on each line. After all, he was just a kid – in his mid-twenties – and he was signing away a really big part of his paycheck every month for the next thirty years. We were buying a house. The signatures became a part of public record, always there in the courthouse even after we’d sold and moved on.

Usually, each mention of adult males in public records means they’re responsible for something. And I, for one, am exceedingly grateful to the signers in my family.

For many modern men, the legal signing starts at age eighteen at the selective service office. Then they sign marriage licenses and certificates. Soon, if they are lucky, they sign birth certificates, one after another. They sign loan documents for cars, college educations and homes, their signatures saying, “I take this burden, so I can be safe, so my family can be safe, so my country can be safe.” And then sometimes, like my Uncle Roy at the Battle of the Bulge in World War II, they give their lives to fulfill the terms of the contract they signed.

My grandfather filed a complaint in 1919 against the Sunset Mining Company. The complaint said he worked for said company without getting paid, so the sheriff was to sell claims to get the money to pay W. A. Free. The court record listed the dates W. A. Free worked for the mine from 10 Mar 1918 to 1 Jun 1918 as mine foreman and 16 Sep 1918 to 24 Nov 1918 at $175 per month.

Why would he go to all the trouble of suing the mining company for $175? Even back then? Because not far from the mine, in a little country house, resided his wife, and his three sons; the little two-year-old was my Dad. Grandpa left his signature there in the courthouse for all time, so he could feed his family.

The will of my great grandfather, A. P. Free, was seventy-eight pages long at $1.00 per page for copies. When I finally saved up enough to order the will and received it, I was ecstatic. The will had been contested by his oldest son in Illinois who had sent a letter written by A. P. Free to the probate court to prove his sonship. This letter is the only writing extant for A. P. Free. There was a time I had wondered if he could read and write. But here was a passionate, loving letter written to his son and other Illinois family members, signed “A. P. Free and Family to his friends.”

There’s hardly a courthouse in the West that doesn’t contain some kind of mining contract for one or another of my Free family men. Some Nevada laws carry the signature of an uncle, Wenlock Free, who served Lincoln County, Nevada as a state representative.

In the 1760s through 1780s, researchers find men’s signatures on documents decrying their treatment by British overlords, resisting taxation, pledging oaths of allegiance, and asking for new county and state governments. These were just ordinary men courageous enough to sign sometimes dangerous documents that still exist today.

From newspaper articles and corporate bulletins I’ve collected about my Dad, I discovered he was the top producing insurance agent for his company for years. I don’t remember that. What I do remember is when I needed something, he’d just smile at me, grab his briefcase and sell another policy. His signature is on thousands of policies out there in the world.

In the main, those ancestral male signatures we genealogists find, represent the courage, dependability and love our “dads” exhibited towards their families and the world.

LaRae Free Kerr, M ED, can be reached at Itsallrelatives@sfcn.org.