Old Documents

What are the most common problems when reading old documents?

The main problems about reading old documents are that the handwriting may be unfamiliar, some of the letters are different, the words might be abbreviated in ways that we don't recognize today, the language that was used, particularly in legal documents would have been Latin before 1733, and many of the documents were dated in a curious way, for example by retinal years which are the date of accession of the current monarch, and they may be dated by perhaps the number of dates after a particular saints festival or a feast day.

Where can I go for help if the documents are in Latin?

Well, there are transcripts of Latin documents that you can have a look at, and then see the formulae that was used in many of the legal documents, so you can predict where names, dates and places should appear. Also use a Latin dictionary and work your way through.

Are the dates and words important?

Dates in documents actually fix the people who are mentioned in them, in time and hopefully in place as well and they will tell you something about the activities in which they were involved. But the dating system in England, Wales and Ireland and the English dominion before 1752, the calendar year actually started on the 25th of March and so from 1752 onwards when the calendar changed to our present day calendar and the new year begins on the 1st of January, you have to be particularly careful interpreting documents and leave the dates as they appear in a document and then interpret the dates later by modernizing them to our modern calendar.

Where can I go for help?

If you need help in reading old handwriting, usually, the archive staff will be happy to oblige you, helping you with the odd word that you might have difficulty with. But if you can't read the Latin or you can't read more than a word or two, it might be a goof idea to ask for a copy if you think that document is particularly important. Don't forget that each copy is going to cost you money. So it might be a good idea to go on a training course, there are lots of these around the country where you can go to learn how to read old handwriting, learn to translate Latin or arm yourself with a manual which will give line by line transcripts of documents which may be similar to the one you will be using. So that you can predict where; names, places, and activities are going to be described. There are also online courses that you can try as well.

Is there a manual that can help me decipher these words?

There are some online glossaries that you can tap into as well, but certainly there are lots of guides around for translating online documents. Also, dialect glossaries, so you can work out what the words were in particular documents, like wills, for example.