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