Madison County Genealogical Society

Minutes of the Meeting - October 8, 2009

The October 8, 2009, meeting of the Madison County Genealogical Society was held at the Edwardsville Public Library in Edwardsville, Illinois.

President, Robert Ridenour, called the meeting to order.

Reports:

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*** NOTICE ***

Dues for 2010 are now being accepted. We would very much appreciate receiving your renewal checks by 1 January 2010. Present members will receive one more Stalker in December and two Newsletters in November and January.

GIFT MEMBERSHIPS AVAILABLE

Do you have a family member that is interested in (or even obsessed with) genealogy? A membership in the Madison County Genealogical Society would be a very thoughtful Holiday Gift. A gift card will be sent to the recipient of any gift membership.

The following memberships are available:
Individual/Family Annual Membership $20.00
Patron Annual Membership $30.00
Life Membership $250.00

Contact our Secretary, Barbara Hitch, at racerbarb@aol.com, about a gift membership.

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October Meeting

On October 8, 2009, Linda Osterdock presented a program titled Deciphering Handwriting in American Documents.

Ms. Osterdock began her presentation by comparing the appearance of Colonial era letters to modern day versions. She supplied hand-outs which had several examples of each character, both upper and lower case, as written during the Colonial era.

Because of the origins of the early Colonial settlers, documents of that period may contain one or more of several languages - Latin, French, English, Spanish, Dutch, or even Native American. The presentation given by Linda concentrated on English.

Elizabeth Shown Mills has commented that the further back in time you go, the more plain English looks like a foreign language. Very early documents did not use punctuation or spacing between words. So you may have to make a translation of a continuous string of strange characters into known English words.

Ms. Osterdock gave several helpful hints for reading old handwriting:

Common Helpful Hints for Reading Old Handwriting

• Use a magnifying glass
• "S" was often elongated at the beginning of a word, in the middle of a word, or when written twice
• Use [brackets] when you are not certain of the word
• Remember there is professional help for faded documents
• Share the document with a friend. Someone else may see something you do not see
• Do not assume anything
• Be aware of commonly confused letters: F/H, J/I, K/R, S/L, O/Q, P/R, U/V, W/M, b/f, d/cl, j/i, k/t, s/1, t/c, o/e, ss/pf or ps

Suggestions From Elizabeth Briggs, The National Institute for Genealogical Studies

• Use fingers to isolate one letter in the word at a time
• Count the letters
• Draw lines for letters, then enter known letters, work on unknown letters (ala "Hangman" game)
• Look for abbreviations, contractions, thorn, and yogh
• Be flexible, and imaginative with spelling
• Look for the same word, or letter, in the document elsewhere
• Identify the date of the document
• Identify the location of the document
• Read the script phonetically, aloud
• Try enlarging the document
• If all else fails, look for an archivist in the area where the document was found
• Remember common spelling variations: · an extra "e" may be added to the end of the word
• · letters "ie" used in place of the modern "y"
• · letter "y" replaces "i"
• · double letters at the end of a word
• · double "f" used as a capital at the beginning of a word

The material distributed to attendees by Ms. Osterdock included a list of common abbreviations and contractions and a list of old style abbreviations of proper names. She also discussed the Thorn and Yogh. The Thorn and Yogh were hand-written characters that represented "th" and "gh," respectively. When movable type was first used in England in 1476, the typesets purchased from the continent did not contain these characters. The English "y" was used as a substitute for the Thorn, so "ye" would become "the" and "yt" or "yat" would become "that." The Yogh, as written, appears somewhat like an Arabian "3" with a tail, and represents the sound of "gh" in "cough," "trough," etc.

The handout also included a list of books, websites, and classes on deciphering old handwriting. This list is available at the following link.

Deciphering Old Handwriting

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