Author Topic: Resources for Deciphering and Recognition  (Read 15172 times)

Offline Berlin-Bob

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Resources for Deciphering and Recognition
« on: Wednesday 17 August 11 18:21 BST (UK) »
This topic will include various reference works/links for help in deciphering and recognition.

Latin probate:
Several people have asked for copies/sight of the general form of Latin probate. These differ little in their wording, often the only variance being in the name of the person, clergy or judge granting the probate. A copy of the general form together with translation is posted here.

English Handwriting, Online course
http://www.english.cam.ac.uk/ceres/ehoc
(link supplied by Jane Masri)

Paleography:
http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/palaeography
Quote from: website
Palaeography: reading old handwriting
1500 - 1800
A practical online tutorial

Palaeography is the study of old handwriting. This web tutorial will help you learn to read the handwriting found in documents written in English between 1500 and 1800.
(link supplied by Veeblevort)



Court-hand restored;
or, The student's assistant in reading old deeds, charters, records, etc (1864)
Quote from: veeblevort

Wright's Courthand Restored available as a free download (5Mb PDF) from

http://www.archive.org/details/courthandrestor00wrig

Lots of illustrative plates of different hands including Chancery, Courthand etc, but more importantly, an excellent chapter on contractions (abbreviations) many of which survived the handwriting styles in which they were originally used.

Can't rate this highly enough. It was the breakthrough for me when struggling with old
documents for the first time.

vv.

____________________________________________________

The resources here have been compiled from topics by RootsChatters, or directly submitted by them.
 :)  Many thanks to everyone who has contributed.  :)

New Resources:
If you know of any useful resources that can be included here, please start a new topic, and a moderator will transfer the link to this topic.
Any UK Census Data included in this post is Crown Copyright (see: www.nationalarchives.gov.uk)