Today I will meet with my beginning genealogy students at Manatee Technical Institute. We've been discussing the proper methods for writing down what we can manage to decipher from old family documents. The key to good family history research is accurate interpretation of documents. Unfamiliar handwriting, fading old originals and poor quality photocopies contribute to difficulty in reading, and perhaps to the drawing of incorrect conclusions about family relationships.
Transcripts are word-for word notations of the contents of a document.
For instance, an abstract of a will might mention the heirs, date signed and the name of the individual. I thought it peculiar that an 18th century ancestor's will indicated the intended disposition of a belt buckle, a linen shirt, a riding crop, a bowl and spoon. However, as I became more experienced with colonial Pennsylvania research, I began to realize that this was more the norm. My ancestors had to beat the flax to make the linen thread, to weave the cloth from which the shirt was made. It was not uncommon for a German farmer to be so fortunate as to have two shirts and two pairs of pants.