Besides being a member of the infamous Donner Party family, I’m also in the family lineage from Platt Rogers Spencer (1800-1864) originator of Spencerian Penmanship, a very popular system of creating beautiful cursive script, taught in American schools for just shy of 100 years. If you’ve ever been inside the rotunda of the U.S. Capitol building, you’ve seen the Spencerian Handwriting Versions of the major documents of the foundation of the United States of America — they were penned by Platt Rogers Spencer under commission from Congress, and that’s not all. He wrote poetry, but only one of his poems has survived to the present day, until now. Here’s the inventory, all of which relate to or carry examples of Platt Rogers Spencer’s personal penmanship and style: