Paleography - Or the Study of Lousy Handwriting
We've all run into something we just can't read. With old-school and new technologies, there is help for deciphering lousy handwriting.
If I spend a lot of time with a document group, I get used to the handwriting, and the words just come into focus. If I don’t visit them for months, I struggle for a while before the brain adapts. Is that just me, or do you have the same experience?
A couple of weeks ago, I came across this:
Born in Solo… Solopaca? Solopara?
I typed Solopaca into the FamilySearch entry I was creating. Autofill suggested Solopaca in Benevento, Italy, which is near Acerra, where this document was created. There is no Solopara in the catalog, so the word is most likely Solopaca.
Let the computer help you. If autofill doesn’t do the job, Google what you think the word is. It may take a couple of spelling variations and clarifying words (such as Italy when looking for Solopaca) before you find the right one. You may have to use wildcards. (Solo* Italy didn’t turn up the right answer in the top responses, but Solop* Italy did.)
A researcher was struggling to determine the parents of Matthew Lesnett and thought that by researching this Joseph Lesnett (FAN) he found in the 1950 U.S. census, he might break through the brick wall. The problem was, while Ancestry transcribed this name as Lesnett, FamilySearch transcribed it as Leavitt. Further research confirmed the name was Leavitt.
Consult supporting documents. The 1940–1900 censuses, and a death record confirmed the name was Leavitt.
BYU Provo & Idaho both have semester-long classes, and Rootstech has lectures dedicated to Paleography. There, you learn the most common handwriting anomalies. Th in Old English was a character called thorn which eventually was written y. The sign did not say Ye Old Tavern, it said The Old Tavern. In Italian, a capital R in older records can look like a capital V. And ss in the middle of a word can look like ff or fs.
Consult the BYU Paleography tutorials that give samples of handwriting over the ages in various languages. (See Additional Reading/Viewing below.) Look at other pages in the document collection to find words you recognize and learn how the writer forms their letters.
Finally, let AI help you. I was transcribing documents for the United States Archives (you too can be a volunteer), and using the AI versions. Personally, I found I was spending more time correcting the AI than it would have taken to just type what I saw. I stopped using the AI, but when I got stuck, I turned to the AI to see what it came up with. Sometimes it was correct; more times it was wrong, but it triggered my brain to see the right word.
Chat GPT came up with
Not even close for the first part. I see: Paolella Clelia ?? matrimonio i Napoli con Alcione Giovanni ?? and the rest is partially accurate—Clelia Paolella married Giovanni Alcione (I’m not sure of the last name) in Naples on 29 October 1993, found in the Marriage book part 2, 1A, number 116.
Use AI to help with the transcription, but don’t expect it to be perfect.
Since the BYUs and RootsTech devote hours to discussing handwriting, you can understand that these tips don’t even get your toe wet. But now you know some places to start looking for the information you need to master this skill.
Additional Reading/Viewing:
BYU Script Tutorial: Making Sense of Old Handwriting
Deborah Carl Wildcard Searching
Maureen Brady, You, Too, Can Read Old Handwriting
Amy Stoddard, BYU Script Tutorials
James Tanner, Learning to Read Old Handwriting
DearMyrtle, AI Handwritten Text Recognition Tool
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This one was such fun, thank you Deborah!
Thank you for your tips! I'm looking forward to using them.