Can you decipher the writing on these records from colonial NC? Historians need help
A handwritten letter buried in the archives of North Carolina might read “I am sir yr most obt and hble servt.”
Translation? “I am sir your most obedient and humble servant.”
Such a convoluted sentence is not an uncommon find amid the troves of historical records preserved by the State Archives of North Carolina. Handwriting has changed drastically over time, meaning some documents contain abbreviations understood only by the writer and recipient with no indication of missing letters to aid the modern reader.
“The handwriting can be quirky and the terms antiquated,” the State Archives said in a recent Facebook post looking for help deciphering the coded language. “Transcribing them will be like solving a word puzzle.”
That’s why historians are making the documents public — and allowing volunteers to weigh in on their meaning.
The State Archives of North Carolina launched Transcribe NC in March 2019 with a collection of records that documented the experiences of men from North Carolina who were drafted or enlisted in World War I, the agency said in a press release at the time. It included draft board records, diaries, journals and scrapbooks.
“This project is critical to telling North Carolina’s story,” Randon McCrea, digital archivist for online programming, said in the release.
The project expanded over time as more collections were digitized, including — most recently — colonial court records under a current grant project from the National Historical Publications & Records Commission, the state agency said.
“These documents are among North Carolina’s earliest historical resources, and we need volunteer help to decipher them so that scholars (at many levels) can make sense of their contents,” the State Archives said in the Dec. 15 Facebook post.
Volunteers can go to the TranscribeNC website and pick a collection to tackle transcribing. The recently added Colonial Court Records, which date to the late 1600s and early 1700s, contain at least 27 categories with up to a few dozen documents each. A color-coded bar across the bottom indicates how much has been indexed, transcribed or still needs review.
Several works have fewer than 20% transcribed, according to the website.
The handwriting can be difficult to read with obscure abbreviations and unfamiliar letters, The Virginian-Pilot reported, pointing to an ‘s’ that looks like an ‘f’ or an uppercase ‘C’ that more closely resembles an ‘O’ or a ‘P.’ Project archivist Marie Stark told the newspaper it’s essentially “colonial chicken scratch.”
The State Archives offers a few tools to help decode the meanings, including style guides for transcribing lists and transcribing diaries as well as a reference for reading historic documents.
The guidelines for transcribing are written at the bottom of the page, and experts will verify whether the transcription is correct before the document is considered completed, The Virginian-Pilot reported.
This story was originally published December 28, 2020 at 6:26 PM with the headline "Can you decipher the writing on these records from colonial NC? Historians need help."
