Can anyone recommend good resources for deciphering Napoleonic-era handwriting ?
My wife's Great-Great-Great Grandfather was an Assistant Surgeon in the British Army during the Peninsuala, Lowland and 100 Day campaigns.
A relation has his diaries, and has started sharing images - which seem to start in July 1813, which is about the time I believed he was transferred from the 1st/91st to the 2nd/91st and Swedish Pomerania/Northern Germany.
Frustratingly, his handwriting his pretty hard to read - I can only decipher one word in three. I spent some time going down google rabbit holes (and experimenting with Transkribus), but was unable to find a good solution for this palaeography challenge !
I also had a go at Transkribus, using a page of a letter that I had found particularly hard to decipher. The results were gobbledygook, reading like bad OCR, and much worse than I could figure out on my own. I think for difficult and atypical hands, the program needs to be trained on that particular form of cursive. Presumably then it can produce reasonably accurate transcriptions of any number of pages in the same hand, but for one or two letters, the training would be more work than deciphering it yourself!
Hi Markus,
Thanks - I did try Transkribus, but perhaps because the scan wasn't the best quality (we don;t want to flatten the pages and cause the spine to break), the results weren't very helpful. (Gareth and Rob were more capable than AI in this task!)
However, Transkribus does look really interesting - so with a better quality scan, I in tend to try using it !
I just got a very helpful hint from a good friend - there's an AI-project in several universities (including Cambridge) for transcribing handwritten text ... and believe me, old German texts are really difficult to read as the letters were different to modern Latin letters.
If you go to https://readcoop.eu/transkribus/?sc=Transkribus ... change the language to "English" and give a try by uploading an image of your text. I was astonished as the engine (which may also be trained by registered users) gives a good result.
Greetings from Berlin
Markus Stein
Thanks Gareth, much appreciated ! I will let everyone know how I fare
Just to update Bob's transcript:
October 12th Tuesday
….But this I suppose will be easily made up. We received the bat and forage money for 165 days this morning.
October 15th Friday
On Wednesday everything was packed up for our march to Griefswald, as expected on Thursday morning. In the afternoon however we were given to understand that our removal was postponed Major [Donald] Gregorson informed me on Wednesday that the difference between my uncle and myself was reported to the general. (I showed him the note which I had rec’d from my Uncle directing me to discontinue my visits at the hospital. He remarked that the General were to report it to England. It might be highly injurious to both. I was before this with Mr. Smith’s the Paymaster General who had spoken the General but had rec’d no direct answer on the subject. He was to see him again that forenoon. The next morning I told the major on parade that as the affair betwixt my Uncle and my self was before the General I hoped before any report was made, I should be allowed to make a fair and full explanation. He replied that his would….
Hi Paul
If I can help, I am prepared tocheck over your transcription against the original and correct it. Gareth
www.garethglovercollection.com
Tom, Bob, I much appreciate your help and guidence (especially Bob providing an excellent "Rosetta Stone" to help me start). To provide a little extra context, this is the "Note Book No. 1"covering July to October 1813, for William Henry Young. From other research, it was during this period that he transferred from the 1st Battalion of the 91st Regiment (he had been in the Peninsula from 1811, promoted in 1812 to Hospital Mate, present at the second siege of Badajos and the Battle of Salamanca) to the 2nd Battalion, which was sent to Stralsund in Swedish Pomerania (i.e. Baltic coast of Germany and Poland)]
He's a fascinating individual - as the Roll Call shows, his career included being transferred to the Scots Greys to help their wounded after Waterloo, life in Ceylon, India, and the Crimean until the day before Florence Nightingale arrived, before retiring and living to be 92. Ironically, a number of his children married into French families !
Thanks again,
Paul
Paul - Another source I use extensively when transcribing is Lionel Challis' Peninsular Roll Call. It has short biographies on over 9000 British officers who served in the Peninsular War. It gives their, ranks, date of ranks, when they serveed there, the battles they fought in, wounds, and often post Peninsular War careers. It can be found at: https://www.napoleon-series.org/research/biographies/GreatBritain/Challis/c_ChallisIntro.html
Paul -
Welcome to the club! A few of us specialize in reading cursive from the Napoleonic Era. It is more of an art than a science. A few tips.
Get a good image of what you are trying to transcribe. I had trouble reading the first eight lines at the top of your image. If necessary take two images with one focused on the top and the other on the bottom.
I found it easier if I convert the image to black and white and then adjust the lightness and contrast to get the crispest image.
Know a bit about your individual before you begin. Which regiment was he in? This will help you know who he is talking about. For example if you know the regiment, the name of the major he writes about would be fairly easy to determine by checking the army lists for that year.
Try to pinpoint the date. The image gave the day and month, but not the year. This will help to determine the names of locations.
Below is my transciption of what I could read. Initially I had a bit of trouble but the more I transcribed it, the easier it became to read his writing. At first I was missing about 20% of the words and would mark the ones I could not read with ???. Once I finished it I went back and re-read it and filled in many of the ???. By doing this, other than the first 8 lines there were only three words I could not figure out.
Use my transcription below as a Rosetta Stone. Many of the words I initially had trouble with began with th. Once I figured out "the' and "that" it was much easier.
As with anything else, the more you practice the easier it becomes.
My transcription:
I suppose will be easily made safe. We received the bat & forage money for 105 days. This morning.
October 15th Friday
On Wednesday every thing was packed up for our march to Griefswald, as expected on Thursday morning. In the afternoon have ???, we were given to understand that our removal was poat poned Major [Donald] Gregorson informed me on Wednesday that the difference between my uncle and my self was reported to the general. (I showed him the note which I had rec’d from my Uncle directing me to discontinue my visit at the hospital. He remarked that the General were to report it to England. It might be highly injurious to both. I was ??? the report to Mr. Smith the Paymaster General who had spoken the General but had rec’d no direct answer on the subject. He was to see him again that afternoon. The next morning I told the major a ??? that as the affair betwixt my Uncle and my self was before the General I hoped before my report was read as I’d wanted be at hand to make a fair and full explanation. He replied that his would"
Let me know if you need any more help.
Bob
Not British, but might help:
Reading Early American Handwriting by Kip Sperry
Understanding Colonial Handwriting by Harriet Stryker-Rodda