The way people write has changed many times over the course of history, and different writing styles can make figures of history seem more remote from us than they actually are. Peter Cooper wrote in long-hand, filling his pen from an inkwell, like a scene from a Civil War movie. But he also ate and slept, appreciated jokes, complained about New York City politics; not so different from the rest of us, really.
Learning to read old forms of handwriting can bring us closer to people of the past—from first presidents to great-grandparents—and help us understand ourselves as part of a continuum of humanity. Being able to read script also unlocks knowledge and insights that are otherwise unavailable, as much of what was written in the past is unreadable by transcription software and remains untranscribed by humans.
There are a variety of handwritten manuscripts in the Cooper Union Archives, from family letters to student applications to expense accounts. Recently a selection of 10 ledgers were digitized, transcribed, and made available online - a true feat of script-reading by transcriptionist Dale Perreault: https://greathallvoices.cooper.edu/Detail/programs/3707
Below is a page from an art teacher's application letter in 1859, and a month of ledger entries from 1866. Can you read these? If not, would you like to be able to? Then keep scrolling down for script-reading advice and resources!
Before you begin:
If you're working with an original document, scan it first. That way, you can handle it without damaging it and zoom in on parts of the document when needed.
Familiarize yourself with specific tics of vocabulary by finding and reading printed materials from the same school/company/office/person whose script you’re reading. Sometimes half the battle is recognizing abbreviations!
Research the kind of document you're working with—is it a ledger, or a bill? Certain documents may have specific phrases, jargon, and abbreviations that were common at the time.
While you're reading/transcribing:
Glance through the entire document first to note any words that are easily recognizable, then use those words to help identify the same letterforms in other words. To keep track, you might want to make an alphabet chart: Write out the alphabet on a piece of paper, then copy examples from the document for each letter, in both lowercase and uppercase.
Not sure if you’re reading a word correctly? Look up unfamiliar words and abbreviations online. Put quotes around them, - like so: “inst.” - to refine your search and control for any autocorrect that might mess up your results.
Read the document out loud. Hearing it may help you to recognize unfamiliar words.
GAME: Early American Handwriting
The goal of this game is to decode the explicit messages of handwritten documents. You will learn to recognize some commonly confused letters. https://www.reed.edu/handwriting/
VIDEO: Reading Cursive Handwriting
This video from Randall Library's Center for Southeast North Carolina Archives and History explains how to read and understand historical documents written in difficult or archaic cursive handwriting. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KzJ27-Vsp-k
BOOK: Reading Early American Handwriting, by Kip Sperry
This book is designed to teach you how to read and understand the handwriting found in documents commonly used in genealogical research. It is available for on-site use in the Cooper Union Archives – just stop by and ask to take a look!
Interested in learning more? Stop by the Cooper Union Archives to view examples of script, or email mary.mann@cooper.edu to make an appointment for a script-reading session. Reading script is a superpower! (According to USA Today anyway.)
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