Teste    A. Earl clk RC

NOTE:
    All the handwriting on the recording of this Deed of Lease appear to be in the same hand except the name of Jacob Köhler. That name is in a different hand and is in what is called Old German Script.
    The deed could have been written by a local lawyer or other person who was not aware of the actual spelling of the Köhler name, hence we see Keylor and Kayler in the deed. However the Köhler spelling reveals the true German spelling of the name. It was the normal practice of the County Clerk to accurately copy the original document. Normally, the clerk’s copy of the document would not contain original signatures. Still, this deed has the anomaly in that the one name, Jacob Köhler is not in the clerk’s hand. Could this be in Jacob Köhler hand? Or maybe the clerk made serious attempt to copy the name accurately.
    The next question is, How could Köhler become Keylor or even Kayler? The answer is phonetics. English speaking, non-German writers often spelled German names the way they sounded.
    We see the ö, a letter o, with the diacritic (diacritical mark) ^.. which is called the umlaut. That letter, ö, does not sound like the letter o. It sounds more like the letter a.
    For clarity, we have shown the name Köhler from the original recording plus two created versions in the Old German Script. Notice the third letter which looks exactly like the long s seen in American scripts until the mid-1800s. In the Old German Script, it is the letter h, not s. Here is an example of the American long s:

    Lastly, we used a commercially available font, Kurrent Kupferstich, from Walden Fonts Co., to create the third example on our graphic. This font is a good tool for those wanting to learn Old German Script.