Transcribing a Special Character

I am trying to decipher a probated will from a Richmond County, GA from 1824. In transcribing the information, I have happened on the use of a character with which I am not familiar. The character has been added to several words in the document, usually as a separate character after the word and occasionally as an additional character continuing a word. The usage does not seem to follow in particular pattern that I can discern. It follows the word “and” several times, but also follows “support”, “at”, “managed”, “kind” and many others.

Attached is a document with images from the orginal showing several of the examples.

The character appears as an enlarged cursive lower case “e”. I have looked through several sources and not come across any description of such as character.  I even looked for court clerk shorthand sources, but found nothing that seemed to correspond. I do not know, if this is just one clerk's writing style or if it has an actual meaning/function.

Have you ever come across this and if so what in the world is it? If not, should I just put a [?] for each occurrence of the character inmy transcription and be done with it?

Thanks for assistance.

Submitted byEEon Mon, 09/14/2015 - 18:49

jww,

What an interesting sample. This strikes us as a penmanship flourish rather than a special character. It's also notable that, in the examples you provide, the scribe uses it only when a word ends in either 't' or 'd.'

Submitted byjww3on Tue, 09/15/2015 - 10:52

In reply to by EE

Thanks, that's the conclustion I was coming to as well.  I appreciate the reply.  

JW