Reading Early American Handwriting

I have just one comment to state. Please leave out religious notes and cards when shipping items. Not an appropriate business model, and I am Anglo-Catholic.

The good:This book is best for the examples it provides. There are about 70 pages of instruction and then about 188 pages of about 94 examples of handwriting that are typed up for reference. Older writing is at the beginning and newer writing is at the end of the book. If you need examples, this is the book you need.The book has useful lists for abbreviations, old terms we might not know, roman numerals, changing calendars, and (slightly so) alphabet letter confusions.Many ideas for how to read messy handwriting are shared.The bad:It is poorly organized. It reads like a person giving a speech and requires notes to make sense of instead of being an immediate organized reference.This book does not go into detail. It is missing explanations and history. It does not explain differences in writing by time or area. It does, though, tell of calendar changes through time. It is only a simple general guide to different handwriting. I do not feel that "American" is worth being in the title.The author often tells what resources to go to instead of going into detail in their own book. They also repeat more than once that practice is needed instead of sharing what they learned from their practice in this book they decided to write. I feel the author could have done better.

I do actual research on my family lines so I often seek original documents. This book is a great help showing samples and then their translations. I have some old family records using some of the older style of writing and I'm grateful that the samples in the book have helped me with reading what looked like chicken scratches in the past. I teach some research topics too so this book helps me with some of my class notes. I have suggested that those researchers who want to be able to read some of their early documents obtain this book and others to help them read and understand what is written. To anyone serious about doing good research, you really need to invest in a number of books and other sources--get your own library to be able to reference questions and get good answers.

This book has been very useful in teaching me how to decipher genealogical documents. Now, I can figure out the correct spelling of names and places. Handwriting styles varied 100 - 300 years ago. This book gives examples of the correct meaning of the written letters and abbreviations used back then. Included in this book, to help you learn, are documents to decipher. (The correct translation follows each document so that you can check your work.) It's like I'm back in school again. Very, very helpful! Glad I found this book. Thanx :)

Very helpful illustrations with examples of written alphabets and actual samples of documents. Has helped me to decipher several wills and documents. Highly recommend.

I had to buy this book for a paleography course I took. It is adequate, but we actually rarely used it. With all the sources available online in digital library or museum collections, we learned more from first hand sources rather than this book. It is okay as a reference in your library, but not as useful as I had hoped.

I chose this book for my college course for my geneological and history degree. I had thought that it was coming at a lower price than it did, so tat was a disappointment for me. However, it was still less money than what I would have paid for at the college bookstore, so that will be good for me.

This book is at my side when I transcribe early American documents. It is chock full of useful information, illustrations, and explanations. It also makes for a great workbook for those who want to teach themselves to transcribe early documents. I would be lost without this book.