Turning hard-to-read cursive into computer type

[unhappycamper]

http://www.bostonglobe.com/metro/regionals/north/2016/03/18/turning-hard-read-cursive-into-computer-type/i1BZEB3fCmFxjlKJmHuJiK/story.html



The Norfolk County Registry of Deeds is nearing completion of a project to transcribe handwritten land records from 1793 to 1900. Here are two old handwritten deeds on Register of Deeds William P. O'Donnell's desk.

Turning hard-to-read cursive into computer type
By John Laidler Globe Correspondent March 18, 2016

~snip~

But anyone studying the nearly 200-year-old deed today might not be able to easily glean those reflections by Adams or the other particulars of the document. Handwritten in the flowing cursive style of the day, the densely-packed words are a challenge to read.

Now a nearly completed initiative by the Norfolk County registry is promising to make it much easier for modern readers to decipher the contents of the Adams deed and other old land records. In what officials say is the first project of its kind in New England, the registry in Dedham is transcribing into type all the county’s handwritten deeds from the time of its founding in 1793 to 1900, when the office switched to typing its documents.

More than 250,000 deeds will have been transcribed by the time the two-year effort concludes in April, according to officials at the registry and Xerox Corp., which is undertaking the $2 million project.

All the transcriptions are accessible free of charge to the public, posted with the existing land records on the registry’s website.