Grow Your Family Tree

Decipher old certificates and documents

One common problem you’ll probably encounter as you find old certificates and documents is deciphering handwriting. The older a document is, the more likely it is to be handwritten, not typed. Early censuses were filled in by assessors, before the head of the household took over in 1911.

What makes it harder is that how English is written has evolved over the years. For example, the letter ‘s’ was often written back to front in a way that made it appear like an ‘f’ character.

Digitise documents with Genscriber

Most genealogy documents are downloaded from the internet, which means they’re already digitised. But if you order a paper certificate by post you’ll need to digitise it using your scanner. Make sure the dpi (dots per inch) is set to 300 or higher (it’s 600 in our screenshot below left) to allow you to increase the magnification level without losing detail.

Next, download and install Genscriber ( www.genscriber.com – click the link in the Download section at the bottom), a free program for transcribing documents. After opening it, click File, Choose Image Folder, to select the folder containing your scanned document.

Select the document and it’ll appear at 100-per-cent magnification in the right-hand pane. Click and drag on the document to move it around, then use the magnifying-glass buttons above it to adjust the zoom level. You’ll also see a button that turns the image into a white-on-black negative (see screenshot above right), which can be easier to read.

Also, click the slider button to reveal controls for adjusting the image’s contrast, sharpness and tint, all of which can improve legibility. Switch to the Textpad tab at the bottom to type your transcription using Genscriber’s built-in word processor.

Play Hangman

There are some excellent resources online to help you decipher words. One of the best is on Find My Past’s blog ( www.snipca.com/29251), where you’ll find tips for decoding old spellings, archaic characters and abbreviations.

The blog’s tips also help with our suggested approach to deciphering old documents: treat it like a game of Hangman. Start by turning the words into a series of blanks. For example, ‘The’ becomes _ _ _. If you can’t determine the exact number of letters in a word, try rendering it as _ _ _ _ _ /_ for a word that might be five or six characters long.

Now consider what kind of document you’re deciphering (such as a certificate or census), and who it’s referring to. This gives you a few clues for key words to look out for, including your ancestor’s name, address and profession, that you can corroborate from other documents. Hopefully, this will help you pick out words from the document that in turn reveal how certain letters and numbers are written.

Next, go through the document word by word, making a note of letters you can identify, and checking whether they appear elsewhere. Over time you’ll start building partial words that may make it easier to fill in any blanks.