![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
I've been doing genealogical research, which for me mainly involves reading lots of town records. These involve handwriting from a few hundred years ago, which degraded for a couple hundred years, then were scanned on microfilm a hundred years ago.
Now first off, it is so awesome that anyone can sit at home and browse through films. When I was younger you had to travel to individual towns and leaf through pages of old books (thereby degrading their condition) just to find a tiny bit of information. Now real source material is much more accessible. It still has its limitations.
In the mid to late 1800's there were census records with a lot of information, but the census takers never asked how to spell a name because they couldn't assume that the person they were talking to knew how to spell. So an individual's name might be spelled differently on every single census. Poor Mehitabel really didn't stand a chance.
But before 1850 it was all about the town records and almost all of those are spelled phonetically. So Rebecca Hoyt might have been born Rebeckah Hoit or Hoite. Whether Sara has an H or not or Ann has an E or becomes an Anna is not based on the parents' decision but entirely the town clerk's habit. The Wingate family becomes the Wingit family just because of dad's pronunciation. The only way anyone had a consistent name was if birth, marriage, and death were all recorded at the same time.
The handwriting is challenging. I don't read the whole page, but learn to recognize the surnames I'm interested in and try to spot those within the page. Comprehending the whole text just takes too long. But sometimes I notice names I'm not looking for. Unusual names provide some amusement. I have pity for the young woman named Experience as I do the children literally named Orphan (they sometimes did this when dad died before the child - male or female - was born). But sometimes names are a just weird. I kept seeing entries for Honey Brown. My first thought was "named after a craft beer!" A weird name, but I've seen lots of weird names. I saw the name in multiple places: born, had a whole bunch of kids. It was later when I was trying to decipher another piece of text written in the same hand that I realized Honey Brown wasn't Honey. It was bad penmanship. Henry Brown lived a long life and had many kids. Too bad, I kind of liked the craft brewery tie in. I mean I did find a Samuel Adams, so why not.
And now I can't get the Morphine song "Honey White" out of my head.
Now first off, it is so awesome that anyone can sit at home and browse through films. When I was younger you had to travel to individual towns and leaf through pages of old books (thereby degrading their condition) just to find a tiny bit of information. Now real source material is much more accessible. It still has its limitations.
In the mid to late 1800's there were census records with a lot of information, but the census takers never asked how to spell a name because they couldn't assume that the person they were talking to knew how to spell. So an individual's name might be spelled differently on every single census. Poor Mehitabel really didn't stand a chance.
But before 1850 it was all about the town records and almost all of those are spelled phonetically. So Rebecca Hoyt might have been born Rebeckah Hoit or Hoite. Whether Sara has an H or not or Ann has an E or becomes an Anna is not based on the parents' decision but entirely the town clerk's habit. The Wingate family becomes the Wingit family just because of dad's pronunciation. The only way anyone had a consistent name was if birth, marriage, and death were all recorded at the same time.
The handwriting is challenging. I don't read the whole page, but learn to recognize the surnames I'm interested in and try to spot those within the page. Comprehending the whole text just takes too long. But sometimes I notice names I'm not looking for. Unusual names provide some amusement. I have pity for the young woman named Experience as I do the children literally named Orphan (they sometimes did this when dad died before the child - male or female - was born). But sometimes names are a just weird. I kept seeing entries for Honey Brown. My first thought was "named after a craft beer!" A weird name, but I've seen lots of weird names. I saw the name in multiple places: born, had a whole bunch of kids. It was later when I was trying to decipher another piece of text written in the same hand that I realized Honey Brown wasn't Honey. It was bad penmanship. Henry Brown lived a long life and had many kids. Too bad, I kind of liked the craft brewery tie in. I mean I did find a Samuel Adams, so why not.
And now I can't get the Morphine song "Honey White" out of my head.
