Coralynn, I think you have been working with the following books: Phillips, Ralph David. Abstracts of wills of Rensselaer County New York in the office of the Surrogate at Troy, New York, 1791-1850 /, compiled by Ralph David Phillips. Nassau, N.Y. : R.D. Phillips, 1938. 3 v. (181, 156, 128 leaves) You mentioned that it was difficult reading some of the vowels. In the days before computers and copy machines, if you wanted more than one copy of something you were typing, carbon sheets were placed behind the original onto which you were typing, and a white piece of paper was placed behind the carbon sheet. The original had typing that was generally pretty clear. When a key struck the original sheet, some material was transferred from the carbon sheet to the second sheet of white paper. This carbon copy had letters which were not as clear as the letters on the first copy. It was possible to make an additional copy by adding another carbon plus another white sheet of paper behind it. However, the letters were even more blurry and the vowels a, o, and e were more likely to fill in. Cliff ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Coralynn wrote: >I may be the first person (in 100 yrs anyway) to transcribe these. The copy I transcribed from was probably typed from the original records on an ancient typewriter, the kind where the ink pools up within some of the letters, and when the person does a stike-over the word becomes illegible. Nonetheless, these were worth struggling through. >PLEASE let me know if the name of an individual you may know well, as in he/she is in your Tree, is mangled and you can solve the problem of "the name is WHAT?!!" > >I only have one more section to transcribe. >http://song-page-coralynn.0catch.com/TRANSCRIPTIONS/Rensselaer%20County%20Wills/CONTENTS.html > >Cheers, >Coralynn B. > >