Reading Old English

In my work as an Online Parish Clerk, as I discussed in a previous post on August 14, 2013, I have pored through hundreds of pages of old parish registers looking for ancestors and transcribing the material for the use of other researchers. My first foray into reading these old documents resulted in not a little confusion and consternation. Over time I was able to develop a passable expertise is reading not just old style English but poor handwriting as well.

One important benefit of my homework was that I learned how to recognize my own family’s surname in very old documents at first glance, such as the 1630 marriage entry for my 8^th great-grandparents, in the Plympton St. Mary parish register, and baptism entries for two of their children in the Bishop’s Transcripts for Cornwood parish, the only source available as the Cornwood parish registers themselves had been destroyed in a fire in 1685.

 

Page in Plympton St. Mary parish marriage register, for April to July 1630: second entry in April – “the 5th daie was married Nicholas Shepherd to Margerit Lee” (insert – blowup of name Shepherd)

Surviving page of Cornwood parish Bishop’s Transcripts for baptisms and marriages in 1638: baptism entry for “William sonne of Nicolas Shepheard bap. the 19 of Feabruary” (insert – blowup of name Shepheard)

When I review some of my early transcribing work now, I see the errors I originally made in reading the documents that resulted from my inexperience in identifying old handwriting. Gradually my library is being corrected. No doubt many other researchers have experienced the frustration of both reading old English as well as trying to sort through published indexes that have been incorrectly done. In those cases there is no option except to try to look at the original documents or copies of them – which, of course, is a good idea anyway.

Recently I have been spending time preparing a presentation to a local genealogical group about the subject and have found innumerable websites where help is available. (I wish that I had seen them a dozen years ago!) I have discovered that the more I search for material about the subject the more resources I find.

There are several organizations that offer online tutorials and courses. Readers of this post may be familiar with some or all of the following:

Ancestry

This commercial subscription site has a Help & Advice section that includes good advice on Understanding Old Handwriting. They have some useful tips for reading old documents.

Brigham Young University

The Department of History and The Center for Family History and Genealogy at BYU has a series of tutorials on Paleography: The Study of Old Handwriting, designed to help in reading old documents of English, German, Dutch, Italian, French, Spanish and Portuguese origin. Their lessons will be helpful to “students, researchers, historians, genealogist and indexers.”

Cambridge University

Another online course on English Handwriting 1500-1700 has been organized by Cambridge University. The course is “designed for students and scholars of early modern English letters, history, theology, and philosophy – for anyone whose research will embrace original English manuscript sources in this period.” The 28 lessons in the course are all downloadable.

FamilySearch.org

FamilySearch also has an English Script Tutorial about reading and understanding old English documents. They also list a number of other websites where help can be found for Scottish, German, Dutch, Italian, French, Spanish and Portuguese writing.

National Records of Scotland

There is quite an interesting tutorial, Scottish Handwriting.com, on palaeography of historical records written in Scotland in the 16^th, 17^th and 18^th centuries. The website is maintained by the National Records of Scotland. The subject matter is very extensive, covering: BMD registers; Burgh records; church court records; legal registers; state and Privy Council papers; tax, customs and excise records; and wills and testaments.

Pharos Teaching & Tutorials Limited

There are also a few commercial, educational enterprises which offer printed guides and/or online courses for analyzing old English handwriting. Pharos has a course titled Old Handwriting for Family Historians. Pharos offers a full range of genealogical courses focused on British and Irish family history.

Rawlinson Center for Anglo-Saxon Studies and Manuscript Research

Recently I found an entire online course called The Electronic Introduction to Old English authored by Peter S. Baker. The 16 chapters plus appendices are fully downloadable or one can follow them online. They cover all aspects of reading and interpreting old English documents. The material was supported by the Richard Rawlinson Center for Anglo-Saxon Studies and Manuscript Research at Western Michigan University.

The National Archives

TNA has a great “practical online tutorial” called Palaeography: Reading Old Handwriting 1500 – 1800. The website offers tips on reading and transcribing documents; dating, numbers, money and measurements. They present copies of many actual documents with which readers may practice. These examples are “of varying levels of difficulty, information about the documents and their historical backgrounds.”

University of Nottingham

If your research goes back a little further than the 16^th century, you might find the Introduction to Reading and Understanding Medieval Documents, prepared by the University of Nottingham, of interest. This online unit in their Manuscripts and Special Collections section has information on format, languages, authentication, provenance, handwriting styles and letter forms used in documents from the Middle Ages.

Researchers can also consult Cyndi’s List for a long list of websites concerned with handwriting and script.

I will admit that I have not been through all of the material in all of the websites. What I have generally observed in my brief review of the courses and tutorials, though, is a high quality and comprehensive treatment of the subject. Any of the websites should offer genealogists valuable information on using old English records.

All images reproduced here are used with the kind permission of the Plymouth and West Devon Record Office, Wayne Shepheard is a volunteer with the Online Parish Clerk program, handling four parishes in Devon, England. He has published a number of articles about various aspects of genealogy and is a past Editor of Chinook, the quarterly journal of the Alberta Family Histories Society. Wayne also provides genealogical consulting services through his business, Family History Facilitated.

My Mother’s Scrapbook

Among some of the memorabilia and mementos of my family is a scrapbook put together by my mother. It appears to have been a project she did as part of her coursework at Normal School in Calgary during her final year of training as a teacher, 1936-37. It is a fascinating glimpse into her past and an interesting study of her talents, but it is also a neat representation of life and society from that particular time-period.

The material is divided into several sections for each of which she found pictorial examples, mainly from then-current magazines. The first part is a selection of “Color Prints” that are mainly country scenes from several places around the world. Each one has vibrant colours and a restful theme. They are artfully displayed with obvious care and balance.

There are a series of pictures of the interiors of homes of the day – kitchens, living rooms, bedrooms and bathrooms – as well as illustrations of articles used in homes of the 1930s.

There is also a collection of plans and pictures of the exteriors of many houses. Again, all have bright colours and illustrate pleasant and peaceful surroundings. Great design and care in homemaking was a central theme in all of the pictures.

A series of vases filled with bright and varied flower-arrangements completed the section on homes.

Mom put together many pages of the latest women’s fashions, subdivided by season. All showed elegant, sophisticated and, of course, bright designs of the day. There were also a couple of pages for children’s clothing.

And there was a section for travel leaving us wondering whether these were places she hoped to see one day: Spain, the Sahara, India, San Antonio, Santa Fe and Florida.

The inclusion of one picture is curious – a greyish drawing of an old man, in a life insurance advertisement with the caption: “The misery of an old man is of interest to nobody”. Was this a social comment about the need to be optimistic in life as well as a practical recommendation to protect against any setback? I don’t really know.

The content and the mood expressed in the scrapbook, I believe, exemplify my mother’s general outlook on life – bright and cheerful. While the project may have had an assigned theme, the materials collected, especially concerning homes and fashion, may well have shown how she envisioned what her life might be like in the future.

I know that my mother continued to have a positive attitude and a happy disposition throughout her life which was tragically cut short well before her 58^th birthday. Having this tangible reminder of her, made with her own hands, is especially valuable.

 

Norma Mabel Miller – student at Calgary Normal School, 1936

Wayne Shepheard is a volunteer with the Online Parish Clerk program, handling four parishes in Devon, England. He has published a number of articles about various aspects of genealogy and is a past Editor of Chinook, the quarterly journal of the Alberta Family Histories Society. Wayne also provides genealogical consulting services through his business, Family History Facilitated.

Using Old Maps

I have done a lot of work with maps and searches for maps. As a geologist, making and using maps were great part of my work. They were invaluable sources of information and mandatory for recording and presenting data and ideas for new prospects.

I use maps extensively in genealogical studies as well, searching for old addresses that appear on censuses and in other records, tracing routes that people took, through life as well as through travel. Using maps I could find out where certain people were through time and come up with some ideas of why they moved.

Small parishes are much easier to review of course. If they have limited roadways or are off the “beaten track” it is much easier to see how the residents might have interacted. Looking at towns and cities on maps, over time (even hundreds of years) allows one to see how the communities developed but also how families might have adapted during this growth if they were around the area for a few generations.

Most of my genealogical work has been confined to the British Isles. Some of the websites I have found useful in looking for old maps or in just seeing what areas looked like include the following:

A Vision of Britain Through Time – topographical, land use and administration maps from the 19th and 20th Centuries:

Baedeker’s Old Guide Books – maps scanned from various Baedeker Guidebooks which were published before 1939

Bing (the old Multimap) – good for ordnance survey and aerial photos

Caledonian Maps – a commercial site where old maps of Scotland can be purchased

Charles Booth Online Archive – a searchable resource giving access to archive material from the Booth collections of the Library of the London School of Economics and Political Science and the Senate House Library

Genmaps – part of the Ancestry community; a site devoted to online images of English, Welsh and Scottish maps from their beginnings to the early 20th Century

Google Maps – present-day maps with a wonderful option to see areas from satellite views and street views which show the detail of individual streets and buildings

Historic MapWorks – commercial site for maps from around the world

Mapco – free access to high quality scans of rare and beautiful antique maps and views

National Library of Scotland – offers high-resolution, zoomable images of over 86,000 maps of Scotland and other areas

Old-Maps.co.uk – another commercial website where historical maps England, Wales and Scotland can be purchased

Ordnance Survey – commercial site for modern-day maps of the Great Britain and Ireland

Old London Maps – old maps of London, England area

Some of them are commercial sites, of course but even on those there is always something that you can download free to at least get some ideas from. There are many others. A Google search for “genealogy maps” leads to hundreds of results describing where old maps can be found. Or one might search for a particular area such as “Cornwood, Devon maps”.

Here is part of an 1809 ordnance map I found covering the Cornwood area. It was very useful to compare to place names found on a tax assessment list from the late 18^th century. According to the tax list, two properties, “E. Rook”, on the upper part of the map, and “Nats Fm.” (also referred to as Notts and Knotts in other documents), on the lower part of the map, were owned by my 5^th great-grandfather, and likely by ancestors further back from him. Knotts was sold in 1810. The family continued to own East Rook until the early 1900s.

 

Portion of 1809 ordnance survey map copied from A vision of Britain through time website; downloaded September 1, 2012

By tracing where some individuals lived in relation to their future partners I could also envision how they might have met. For example, my wife, Linda’s grandfather, Alexander Cooper, lived with his mother at 4 John Street, Glasgow, Scotland, in 1881, according to the census taken that year. His first wife, Margaret Scott, lived at 44 Hutcheson Street, just three minutes away. She was a confectioner and probably worked in a shop fairly close to her home. I like to think that they may have met and fell in love in a candy store.

 

Portion of a map of the New Plan of Glasgow with suburbs, from Ordnance and Actual Surveys constructed for the Post Office Directory by John Bartholomew and published in 1882, showing the residence locations for Alexander Cooper and Margaret Scott; copied from the National Library of Scotland website July 22, 2014.

Wayne Shepheard is a volunteer with the Online Parish Clerk program, handling four parishes in Devon, England. He has published a number of articles about various aspects of genealogy and is a past Editor of Chinook, the quarterly journal of the Alberta Family Histories Society. Wayne also provides genealogical consulting services through his business, Family History Facilitated.