Skip to main content

Reading Old Script

 


It's just part of the job. You are bound to encounter certain forms of older scripts because this is the nature of diving into the past. Depending on where you need to go in order to answer a research question, you may need to read documents from the nineteenth century, or as far back as a will dated to the year 1675. It's all dependent on the research question's overall goal. That determines what type of documents you will need to read.

But, it's important to recognize trying to transcribe certain types of older documents can be extremely daunting if the words look like chicken scratch, and if you lack experience reading old documents. 

Yeah, I know. When a person's penmanship is terrible, and it still affects the genealogist doing the research, it's out of your control. You will need to do your best to interpret the types of documents encountered when the writer in the days of yore didn't make the words easy to understand. They were definitely not thinking of making the words pretty, even when their writing was naturally bad. 

However, if it becomes annoying to handle it alone, remember you can ask other genealogists for assistance to transcribe documents. You are not the only genealogist in the world.  

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Beware Errors in Genealogical Sources

  Most individuals esteemed as professionals in the genealogical field will agree with the statement about to be made here: fact check a source by looking at another source if you can find them. When you cite one source alone, you may not even know because you didn't conduct thorough research, a genealogical error is being presented.  For example, if you are looking for an ancestor or relative for yourself or a client, sometimes in a census information may be inaccurately written. You may never know if an entry within the census is wrong even if you don't look for sources to confirm what you find in the first source. As a second example, in certain genealogical lineages, someone could have accidently recorded the wrong child for a set of parents. I experienced in one occasion, when I was researching a personal ancestor born in the 1700's. In one genealogical list from another genealogist, there is a list of more than one child. But when finding another source, the same pare
Post a Comment
Read more

Research Log

  Research logs are vital to keeping records of your genealogical research. However, you do not need to keep a physical research log; you can create a digital one, but make sure you don't lose the data. 
Post a Comment
Read more