Link: Resources for Reading 16th to 19th Century Handwriting

[avacuppa]

This will come in very handy I think.  Thank you for posting.

[yattonharry]

We use #Examples of Handwriting 1550-1650 by W.S.B Buck - can get it SoG and National Archives shop or that place which most people buy books.

Jill

[veeblevort]

For Scottish documents, the following are useful:

http://www.scottishhandwriting.com

especially http://www.scottishhandwriting.com/tutorials.asp

Together with the online dictionary of the Scots Language:

http://www.dsl.ac.uk

vv.

[veeblevort]

For those obsolete or obscure words in wills etc.

Wright's 'English Dialect Dictionary' in six volumes
available as searchable pdf files.
Claims to contain all words known to have been used
or still in use over the 200 years up to 1898.

Volume 1: http://archive.org/details/englishdialectdi01wrig

and so on for the other 5 volumes.

vv.

[yattonharry]

That seems a great link, Thanks.

Thanks also to Janey for her excellent link.  I hadn't visited this site before but it is really good.

[veeblevort]

The Record Interpreter, sets out to expand upon Wright's
Courthand Restored, and succeeds, particularly with
abbreviations. Pdf file available here:

http://archive.org/details/recordinterprete00martiala

This resource has been brought to our attention at this
board numerous times (by arthurk, Roger in Sussex,
billyblue, msallen, and redroger) but for the sake of
people newly arriving here, I think its worth posting
to a resources topic.

vv.

[yattonharry]

A group of us have been transcribing wills for our history society for four years. The books which help us are:  'Examples of Handwriting' - W.S.B.Buck [ I mentioned this earlier] 'The Local Historian's Glossary and Vade Mecum' - Joy Bristow and 'Words from Wills & other probate records' - Stuart A Raymond, 'A Secretary Hand ABC Book' by Alf Ison, a great little book. All are excellent.  We have covered from 1540 to around 1750 so far.

Hoping this helps anyone starting out on this project, which I would recommend to all history societies be they family or local.

[chinakay]

Brianz's link has disappeared, anybody know where to? Unfortunately the site is a Finnish genealogical society and even with Google Translate to help I can't find a handwriting section

Cheers,
China

[Redroger]

Just tried it, and got a 404 Not found error