Left-Handed Penmanship Contest
William Oland Bourne, the editor of The Soldiers’ Friend newspaper, recognized that men who lost the use of their right hands through amputation or disability during the war faced challenges learning to use their left hands in their postwar lives. His paper sponsored two left-handed penmanship contests, the first contest offered cash prizes totaling $1000 and the second $500, for previously right-handed Union veterans. Submissions typically recorded the soldier’s own story, as in the entry by John F. Chase from Augusta, Maine, but sometimes also include poetry or patriotic sentiments, and occasionally a photograph. In Washington, D.C., an exhibition of all entrants opened to large crowds on May 1, 1866.
William Oland Bourne, the editor of <em>The Soldiers’ Friend</em> newspaper, recognized that men who lost the use of their right hands through amputation or disability during the war faced challenges learning to use their left hands in their postwar lives. His paper sponsored two left-handed penmanship contests, the first contest offered cash prizes totaling $1000 and the second $500, for previously right-handed Union veterans. Submissions typically recorded the soldier’s own story, as in the entry by John F. Chase from Augusta, Maine, but sometimes also include poetry or patriotic sentiments, and occasionally a photograph. In Washington, D.C., an exhibition of all entrants opened to large crowds on May 1, 1866.