Decipher those difficult documents

As it’s National Handwriting Day today, I thought it would be an ideal opportunity to take a look at some of the online tools available (freely, of course) to help you read old documents that contain unfamiliar writing or language.  Known as palaeography, this is a skill that genealogists will often wish they had kept up.  So even if you’ve already acquired it, check out the resources listed below and refresh your knowledge!

Most of these involve a bit of effort to familiarise yourself with different alphabets and numerals as well as equivalent date, money and measurement systems.  But if you have struggled to interpret antiquated handwriting or words, learning how to approach them will be a great investment of your time and brainpower.

Below are some websites that offer free tutorials and digital images to help you to practice reading documents from the 16th to the 18th centuries.  Because some older types of documents can include Latin words or phrases (or be written entirely in Latin), I’ve included a helpful resource for tackling that, as well as a dictionary of the Scots language, as that can sometimes crop up in documents north of, and around, the Border.

z    National Archives – This short course, "Palaeography: reading old handwriting 1500-1800", contains ten practice documents and a fun ducking stool game.

z    Scottish Handwriting –  If your research takes you back to the 1700s or earlier in Scotland, this website will prove invaluable.  It features online tutorials, coaching, and a problem solver for when you’re really stuck.  

z    University of York – Download the PDF booklet “Reading the Past: 16^th and 17^th century English handwriting”. This is a great introduction to the art of transcribing.  It includes a variety of sample documents to practice with, along with transcripts and explanatory reading notes.

z    FutureLearn – Sign up for a free three-week interactive course in Scottish palaeography.  Teachers from the University of Glasgow provide the written material and present excellent YouTube videos on different aspects of palaeography.  The course also covers some English documents.

z    Learn Medieval Latin – This National Archives guide for beginners takes you through the process of learning essential Latin step by step.

z    Dictionary of the Scots Language – Especially useful with Burns Night in the offing! 

My top tip for developing your palaeography skills is to be patient with yourself.  If you're finding a word or letter impossible to decipher, take a break from it altogether.  When you return to it, you'll be surprised at how suddenly it becomes clear.

Just to make sure you've checked out these resources thoroughly:  What’s a boll? (Hint: not the weevil kind)

Give a Little, Gain a Lot

You may already have benefited from indexed records as you’ve researched your family tree online and perhaps wondered what goes into compiling these time-saving databases.  One way is through the genealogy community getting together and giving just a little time to make free indexes possible. 

For the last few years, Who Do You Think You Are? magazine has sponsored “Transcription Tuesday”, in partnership with several recordkeeping organisations.  Simply put, it involves you reading a digitised original record and typing key pieces of information from it into a spreadsheet or free software, on your computer at home.  Full instructions are given for each project, especially where handwriting or language may present problems for the English reader. 

The results of your participation are then compiled into free-to-search indexes to the records, making them much more accessible and saving time trawling through them looking for names.  These datasets will be made available through the sponsoring organisations.

This year’s Transcription Tuesday takes place on the 4^th of February.  Why not check out the four projects on offer and see which one you’d like to contribute to on the day?  I’ve included details and links below for each project, and added WDYTYA? Magazine’s “difficulty rating” for a bit of context, with a grade of 1 being the easiest.

Stobs Camp Internment Research Centre – to take part in this project, download a spreadsheet from this Google Drive link.  Stobs was a WWI prisoner of war/detention camp in the Scottish Borders and this will be the perfect transcription job for you if you are a military history buff or you can read a bit of German or French.  Graded 3 for difficulty

Royal Navy – this project aims to build a free database of RN ratings and officers from WWI, and it’s being jointly run by The National Archives, the National Maritime Museum, and the Crew List Index Project.  If you would like to work on these records, email crewlists@nationalarchives.gov.uk by 21 January.  Graded 2 for difficulty

Ancestry West Midlands Police Records – this could be the most fiddly project to join as it requires you to have an Ancestry account (you can sign up for free with them) and download special transcription software from their Ancestry World Archives Project page.  The project aims to index constabulary records from the mid-19^th century to the 1940s.  Graded 2 for difficulty.

FamilySearch Parish Registers – including parishes from a variety of English counties, this year’s FamilySearch project covers nonconformist church records.  Sign up at https://www.familysearch.org/indexing/.  After Transcription Tuesday, you can continue indexing with FamilySearch on their wide range of records from around the world.  This is an ideal project if you haven't transcribed or indexed records before.  Graded 1 for difficulty

Transcription Tuesday is a great way to collaborate and give back to the genealogy community.  You could even get together with family or fellow genealogists and hold your own transcription event.  If you use social media, you can share how you're participating on Twitter with the hashtag #TranscriptionTuesday or on Facebook at the WDYTYA Magazine group.

The Sensational and the Factual

Back in May last year, I wrote a post covering a few free online newspaper websites (you can see it here).  The other day I noticed one of the subscription newspaper services promoting their access to the Illustrated London News, and I thought, “That’s odd, I was sure there was a free website for that.”  

And, indeed, there is: John Weedy’s Collection of the ILN from Victorian times to 1973.  Browse his site to experience the sensational and the factual.  Listed for each issue are headlines, sometimes obituaries, fascinating cover pages and other illustrations. You can also choose a specific year to explore using the grid section of the page. 

This led me to revisit the free newspaper sites I have bookmarked on my web browser, some of which I've listed below.  Then as now, journalists wrote and published stories from around the world, so you shouldn’t dismiss searching for your relatives in newspapers from other countries – you could find them mentioned in the last place you’d expect. 

📜 Papers Past – the website of the National Library of New Zealand, which contains not only newspapers but magazines, journals, letters, diaries, and parliamentary papers.  Search using your own terms, or explore by title or region.

📜 Trove –  hosted by the Australian National Library.  I covered this site in last year’s post, and yesterday they posted an appeal for help in correcting the text in their online news collections.  Since much of the indexed text has been interpreted by computer, there are errors that will be obvious to human eyes and easy to edit.  This is a great way to “give back” to the research resources you enjoy at no cost, as it will increase the accuracy of search results.  Learn more about the project here. 

📜 Chronicling America – the United States Library of Congress hosts digitised newspaper images from 1789 to 1963.  These are searchable by keywords, dates and states, or if you know the name of the newspaper, by title.

📜 Old Fulton New York Postcards – despite the name, this low-tech site covers newspapers from the U.S. and Canada for 1795-2007.  Enjoy listening to some vintage radio drama while you search the site, and be sure to peruse the Help page, which also includes a link to let you browse the historical photos and papers that the site holds.

I couldn’t finish this whistle-stop tour of free newspaper collections without mentioning the fantastic services provided by public libraries and archives around the world.  If you like nothing more than leafing through the original newspapers your ancestors would have read, this is a superb option.  Contact your nearest library or record repository to find out about their hard-copy collections.