If anybody has had the dubious pleasure of looking back over old documents, and I am especially thinking now of the microfilm copies of old 19th century Irish Catholic parish records, its amazing that more mistranslations don't occur. Old Copperplate handwriting may look beautiful but it's often a nightmare to try and decipher..... Sometimes I think that there would be a business goldmine in training budding genealogists to unravel such scripts! Mary

Mary Simpson wrote: >..... > >Sometimes I think that there would be a business goldmine in training >budding genealogists to unravel such scripts! > > I doubt it. Like various other abstruse skills (eg French Polishing) these things take half an hour to teach, but half a lifetime to learn. I have been transcribing 17th and 18th century documents (mostly in Secretary Hand) for something approaching 10 years, and I'm just beginning to think I've got the hang of it. Mind you, that doesn't mean I can decipher everything, just that, when I get stuck, the professionally-trained archivists are often puzzled, too. Gavin Bell