Includes penmanship samples and calligraphic flourishes done by Platt Rogers Spencer and members of his family as well as by penmen who were his students and followers. Most of the items are loose and are filed in folders. There are however, a number of items that are collected in scrapbooks, which are numbered 1-14. A large portion of the collection includes samples of student exercises, many of which were done by students of Sarah Spencer Sloan, a calligraphy teacher. Sarah Sloan taught at a number of institutions, primarily in the Chicago area, including the Dearborn Seminary, the Kenwood Seminary, the Misses Grant Seminary, Gleason’s Academy, and the Chicago Athenaeum (Boxes 25-26). Box 27 includes the work of Platt Rogers Spencer and his children. A sub-category of this series includes calling cards, all hand-written. Boxes 34 through 40 contain autograph books and scrapbooks. The autograph books are numbered as volumes 1 and 2, the scrapbooks number 3 through 14, and contain calling cards, correspondence between penman, envelope cuts, and decorative flourishes, etc. pasted into scrapbooks. Some of the samples included in the scrapbooks include items written by notable penman such as E. W. Bloser, F.B. Davis, H.W. Flickinger, Fred Heath, H.W. Kibbe, I.H. Lipsky, J. Lusk, Austin Palmer, Fielding Schofield, W. B. Showalter, and Robert Spencer (who may have been the creator of the scrapbooks). Louis Madarasz created one of the scrapbooks (Box 34, Vol. 4) in the collection.