Karl von Loewe
Updated: Oct 1, 2021
As a graduate student of history I studied Russian and Cyrillic paleography, and I soon realized that widespread literacy unfairly handicapped historians seeking to read old documents. I loved twelfth-century documents. Fewer scribes meant fewer "hands" to recognize. But by the seventeenth century many more people wrote, often in needlessly flowery script. Aaargh! In my mind, cursive became curse-it.
Most of my transcription problems in my genealogy research stemmed from twentieth-century German handwriting. Letters and diaries can be a real challenge, even with helpful charts such as this one. An extremely useful guide with ten tips on deciphering German script can be found here.
When your research involves documents all written by one person with a difficult hand, create a cheat sheet like the one here:
