There is not a genealogist, amateur or professional who has not struggled at times to understand a document that is written in more archaic, or older terminology. As you can see by the document above, a document which is partially hand written and in part printed, their are rampant misspellings and areas in which deciphering the old script is difficult. This document was made relatively recently as older paperwork goes, being done in about 1762. To make it readable at all I scanned it, and then using the sofware, enhanced the contrast to deepen the text.
All of us have struggled a time or two to make out written, understand a term or find what we want in a document that may have been written in the 17th or 18th century.

Sometimes its having to find the meaning of a term thats not been used in two hundred years, while at other times it is getting past the handwriting which in that time span was written with a bit more flourish and certainly not with any modern writing tool.

Older genealogy documents create unique challenges for those who are trying to decipher them for their genealogy research and getting past those challenges can mean adding a whole new branch to your family tree so it is well worth your time to learn how to read them.

Consider even in todays society how rampant are typographical errors in documents such as birth certificates and marriage licenses and you will begin to understand how they might have happened in a society that was a bit less precise in their transcription of names and dates.

As you progress backward in time the difficulties will be a bit greater because in addition to errors in spelling, you will deal with other types of phrasing, unusual writing tools and implements and archaic terms in the documents you peruse for your genealogy research.

Then there are the differences in dating. Some of these will present problems with deciphering what the actual date really was.
Taking some time to research that as well will assist you greatly in learning to understand the documents you view in your genealogy research.

One very common method of dating in years past was the recording of the number of years since this particular monarch came to power (i.e. 2008 is the 55rd year of the reign of Elizabeth II)
This used to be common practice.
The Julian calendar uses a double method of dating.
Studying these methods is absolutely going to be necessary when studying older documentation of birth, marriage and death records for genealogy.

Additionally there are going to be some archaic terms used on some of your documents, particularly when written several hundred years in the past. Get a good software or dictionary of older phrases and terms to help you to understand those terms.

One last comment would be to buy yourself a good software program.
Photocopies of very old documents often are not all that you hope or wish they might be.
Genealogists will want to enhance the images, darken the ink on the photocopy so that the writing there is more legible and less difficult on the eyes.
It will make a huge difference in the overall outcome of your historical research to actually be able to see the image that is on the paper clearly.

Tags:  archaic documents genealogy documents reading old documents