Contact the Center
Center for Southeast North Carolina Archives and History
Randall Library, 2nd floor
5162 Randall Dr.
Wilmington, NC 28403
csencah@uncw.edu
910-962-7810
Visit the Center
Location
The Center for Southeast North Carolina Archives and History is located on the 2nd floor of Discovery Hall in the UNCW Library.
Hours
The Center is open from 10am to 2pm, Monday - Friday. Appointments are not required, but we strongly encourage visitors to contact us in advance of any planned research visit to discuss your research topic and confirm the availability of collections. Onsite research assistance may be limited.
Access Policies
Prior to visiting the Center, users should familiarize themselves with our access and use policies.
Books and Articles
These books and articles provide more information on historical handwriting traditions.
- E. Kay Kirkham, The Handwriting of American Records for a Period of 300 Years (Logan, Utah : Everton Publishers, 1973)
- Julie A. Fisher, “Slow Reading and Empathy: Accessing Early America through Transcription and Translation,” in Teaching Literature in Translation: Pedagogical Contexts and Reading Practices (2022): 235-244.
- Kip Sperry, Reading Early American Handwriting (Baltimore Md: Genealogical Publishing, 2008)
- Hilary Marshall, Palaeography for Family and Local Historians (Chichester West Sussex: Phillimore, 2004)
Learn to Write in Cursive
Sometimes the best way to learn how to read cursive handwriting is to get more practice writing it yourself! You may find these resources useful if you want to learn or practice your own cursive writing:
- Loops and other groups : a kinesthetic writing system. Instructor's manual byCall Number: LB1590 .B462 1990ISBN: 0761641408Publication Date: 1990Manual and worksheets designed to teach children how to write in cursive
- Cursive Writing Course with Free WorksheetsYoutube playlist containing instructional videos for how to write in cursive.
- Consistent Cursive Free Online CourseYoutube playlist containing instructional videos for how to write in cursive.
Video - Reading Cursive Handwriting
If you're struggling to read a document written in old handwriting, start by watching this handy video tutorial. It will give you some tips and tricks to use when deciphering historical cursive.
Common Abbreviations
Abbreviations for first names and titles were commonly used in handwritten documents until the early 20th century. The following chart lists some of those abbreviations and the words they represent.
Chart taken from E. Kay Kirkham, The Handwriting of American Records for a Period of 300 Years (Logan, Utah: Everton Publishers, 1973).
Along the same lines, several phrases that were frequently used in letter writing will often be abbreviated as well. It was common to sign letters with the phrase “your obedient servant,” and you will often see this abbreviated as “yr obt svt.”
Other common abbreviations are viz., which stands for the Latin term “videlicet” and is used as a synonym for “namely” or “in other words.” You may also encounter the abbreviations “inst.," "ult.," and "prox.” These stand for the Latin terms “instante mense, ultimo mense, and proximo mense” and they mean “this month, last month, and next month.” If the document you’re transcribing includes a phrase like “Yours of the 14th inst. at hand,” that means the writer is responding to a letter they received from the addressee on the 14th of the current month.
Practice Reading Old Handwriting
The Center for Southeast North Carolina Archives and History has created five online quizzes that will help you practice cursive handwriting. Check them out below!
If you want more practice, you may find these other online quizzes and tutorials helpful:
- Folger Shakespeare Library: Practical Paleography Flash Card SetsThese interactive flash card sets use examples from some of the Folger Shakespeare Library's early modern manuscript collections.
- Practice Transcribing Early RecipesThis transcription game was designed by Julie Fisher (US National Archives) using words from early American recipe books.
- Brigham Young University Script TutorialThis website offers guidance in the deciphering of documents written in archaic handwriting styles or alphabets. The tutorials and materials gathered here are meant to help a variety of people learn more about old scripts and how to use that knowledge to analyze and interpret the past. There is general introductory material about the history of writing and the development of different scripts (or hands) in the Paleography Introduction pages, as well as extensive and interactive Language Tutorials.
- English Handwriting Online 1500-170028 transcription exercises, sortable by difficulty level and date. Students can make their own transcriptions and compare them to the model transcription, as well as take interactive tests.
- National Archives (UK): Palaeography: Reading Old HandwritingInteractive transcription exercises for 10 documents arranged in order of difficulty, in addition to a further practice section which contains many additional non-interactive transcription exercises.
Online Resources and Tools
These online tools and resources can help you decipher difficult handwritten words and provide more information on historical handwriting practices.
- OneLook Dictionary SearchUse this website as a search engine for words and phrases. OneLook is particularly useful for looking up unfamiliar words and spellings, or searching for words that are only partially legible. Users can search by patterns consisting of letters and the wildcards * and ? to retrieve a list of words matching your pattern. The asterisk (*) matches any number of letters or symbols. The question mark (?) matches exactly one letter or symbol.
- Brandfolder Text Extractor ToolThe text extractor will allow you to extract text from any image. You may upload an image or document (.pdf) and the tool will pull text from the image. The text extractor tool can read and transcribe handwritten text and may be useful in helping you decipher a difficult word.
- A Reference for Reading Historic Documents (State Archives of North Carolina)This document created by the State Archives of North Carolina gives an overview of abbreviations, shorthand, lettering, and other elements of handwritten documents that may prove difficult for modern readers to decipher.
- Folger Shakespeare Library Alphabet BookThe Folger Shakespeare Library's Alphabet Book offers a quick reference for reading early modern English secretary hand, including an index of letterforms and abbreviations.
- How to Read 18th Century British-American WritingThis online resource from dohistory.org gives a brief introduction to 18th century British and American handwriting traditions, including lots of examples of words and letterforms.
- English Language Resources and Handwriting Helps (FamilySearch)Whether you are struggling to read old handwriting or working in an unfamiliar language, FamilySearch can help you understand hard-to-read records. Includes letterform examples from English language documents as well as other languages.