Need Help Deciphering Old Genealogy Documents? Explore These Free Handwriting Resources
From online databases to image archives, researching our family history has never been easier. However, there is one problem that digitization and online databases cannot fix: historical handwriting. From words no longer used to character formation, cursive style and even sentence structure, it can be very frustrating to the genealogist when deciphering old family documents or official papers. To assist you in this process, let me share some tips and tricks that I have learned in my own research.
While the official study of historical handwriting is known as Paleography, there is a lot more to it than you might think. Some basic themes and issues that you might encounter first are abbreviations and styles.