Platt Rogers Spencer: Creator of Spencerian Script

This short biography shows how "the perfect shapes in nature" inspired young Spencer to create Spencerian Script. Spencer is considered the Father of American Penmanship partly because he was the first person to publish a series of copybooks that teachers used in their classrooms. Anyone who was in school from the mid-1800's until the early 1900's would have studied Spencerian Script from Spencer's workbooks. During this time period, all documents had to be hand copied by clerks, who embraced Spencerian Script because its movements did not tire their hands and wrists. Spencer was also well-known as a poet, an abolitionist, and outspoken for the Temperance movement.