“They could write legibly”
We have letters at the family homestead from the 1830s, and these farm boys’ handwriting was not only legible, it was art. Gorgeous handwriting. My dad’s was, too.
Excellent handwriting is a skill I never developed. I am left handed and I think my penmanship teachers just said “do the best you can.”
Not a whole lot of handwritten letters going out these days. Mostly emails soon to evaporate into the ethernet. Maybe the NSA will turn out to be the go-to resource for archives.
I have stacks of family letters from old. The subjects tend to be mundane, the author probably wishes shredding, and no one will likely ever see those words again. Vanity.