As an added note...for anyone starting out.  I recommend you read all 
the articles from the last link regarding handwriting and common 
mispellings.  The record abstracts become easier to read if you are 
aware of the handwriting 'issues' described.  Also searching for your 
ancestors with the common mispelling thrown in allow you to find 
baptizism and marriage records that you won't find otherwise.

Angie

--- In ranchos@yahoogroups.com, "aajay1073" <aajay1073@y...> wrote:
> Under Genealogy.com Research guidelines, Deciphering Documents and 
> Handwriting there are a few articles:
> 
> 1) Reading Handwriting
> http://www.genealogy.com/00000010.html
> 
> Towards the top of this document it says:
> "Watch out for double S's. The first S in a pair was often written 
to 
> look like a lower case F."
> 
> 2) Guidelines for Reading Old Documents
> http://www.genealogy.com/68_sperry.html
> 
> The material at Genealogy.com is a good read if you have a chance 
to 
> browse over there:
> http://www.genealogy.com/developing_research_skills.html
> 
> Good luck,
> Angie
> 
> --- In ranchos@yahoogroups.com, Joseph Puentes <makas@n...> wrote:
> > 
> > I was watching a documentary about American Slave Narratives. In 
one 
> of 
> > the stories it was talking about slaves being sold at auction and 
> they 
> > showed a bill of sale. the time period was about 1850. In the 
bill of 
> > sale at the bottom it spell "witness" like this:
> > 
> > "witnefs"
> > 
> > now this reminds me of the times I've seen Castañeda spelled 
Caftañeda
> > 
> > does anyone know about the use of the "F" for "S's" in early 
> handwritting?
> > 
> > thanks,
> > 
> > joseph