Revolutionary Palaeography

There has been a surge of interest in historical handwriting in the past month as people volunteer their time to help institutions with crowd-sourced transcription projects such as Transcribe from the Nova Scotia Archives and the volunteer initiative from the Fredericton Region Museum (New Brunswick).

We have rounded up the palaeography resources created at UNB Libraries so that it might be of use to those new to transcription of eighteenth and nineteenth century Atlantic World documents.

Some of the following comes from our previous blog posts; check them out for the basics of palaeography:

• What Does That Say?!: Getting Started With Palaeography
• What Does That Say Again?!: More Palaeography Basics, Part 1
• What Does That Say Again?!: More Palaeography Basics, Part 2
• A PDF Palaeography Help sheet is available on our Research Help page.
• For French palaeography, see Paleography à la Française by Stephanie Pettigrew on Unwritten Histories.
• Skills for Historians of the Future: Palaeography which was posted on Borealia: A Group Blog on Early Canadian History; it discusses the need to teach palaeography in higher education.

Below, you will find examples of cursive letters taken from documents drawn from The Loyalist Collection, created around the time of the American Revolution. You may download a copy from our Research Help page.

Let us know if you have any interesting palaeography projects on the go and keep transcribing!

Leah Grandy holds a PhD in History and works as a Microforms Assistant at the Harriet Irving Library.