I agree with Angie about all the good hints given in the Genealogy.com articles on Colonial writing. It is amazing to me that throughout the Western world in the 18th century, when communicating and traveling took forever, that people used the same script from London to Madrid to New York to Mexico. Since the priests were the educated class, I guess they standardized handwriting. However, it is also amazing to me that even in 18th century records, I sometimes come across script that is as modern as what we use today. I bless such priests when I read their jottings in baptisms, etc., and I curse the ones who had sloppy handriting or used the most archaic scripts. For each change of priests in the recordings of baptisms, etc, I have to study and compare the way a particular priest formed his letters before I can understand his writing---then just as I am familiar with his writing, there comes another priest's handwriting, and off we go again. Also, don't you also just hate it when they use abbreviations such as "en dcho dia del dcho mes de dcho a~no" and you have to scroll back ten frames to find out what day, month and year you are in when you come across a record you want to copy? I think also finally after many years of viewing thousands upon thousands of microfilmed records I have made a mental note of all the possilbe abbreviations used for the many given names and surnames, etc. I love going to the FHC at Salt Lake City where they have the 40X and 60X viewers. Our local FHC doesn't have those, and I have to use a magnifying glass, and my eyesight is just about shot. Amen. Emilie Garcia Port Orchard, WA ----- Original Message ----- From: aajay1073 Sent: Tuesday, July 12, 2005 3:20 PM To: ranchos@yahoogroups.com Subject: [ranchos] Re: Reading Old Handwriting As an added note...for anyone starting out. I recommend you read all
the articles from the last link regarding handwriting and common
mispellings. The record abstracts become easier to read if you are
aware of the handwriting 'issues' described. Also searching for your
ancestors with the common mispelling thrown in allow you to find
baptizism and marriage records that you won't find otherwise.
Angie
--- In ranchos@yahoogroups.com, "aajay1073" <aajay1073@y...> wrote:
> Under Genealogy.com Research guidelines, Deciphering Documents and
> Handwriting there are a few articles:
>
> 1) Reading Handwriting
> http://www.genealogy.com/00000010.html
>
> Towards the top of this document it says:
> "Watch out for double S's. The first S in a pair was often written
to
> look like a lower case F."
>
> 2) Guidelines for Reading Old Documents
> http://www.genealogy.com/68_sperry.html
>
> The material at Genealogy.com is a good read if you have a chance
to
> browse over there:
> http://www.genealogy.com/developing_research_skills.html
>
> Good luck,
> Angie
>
> --- In ranchos@yahoogroups.com, Joseph Puentes <makas@n...> wrote:
> >
> > I was watching a documentary about American Slave Narratives. In
one
> of
> > the stories it was talking about slaves being sold at auction and
> they
> > showed a bill of sale. the time period was about 1850. In the
bill of
> > sale at the bottom it spell "witness" like this:
> >
> > "witnefs"
> >
> > now this reminds me of the times I've seen Castañeda spelled
Caftañeda
> >
> > does anyone know about the use of the "F" for "S's" in early
> handwritting?
> >
> > thanks,
> >
> > joseph
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