Transcribing

This past year I have been lucky to spend some time transcribing letters for the Heritage Alliance in Jonesborough, Tenn. These came to us when a search in old furniture in a house destined for demolition turned up a huge bundle of letters and cards. I don’t have a number handy. They were written between 1850-1950 from Sonoma, California, Collins, Missouri, and several cities in Tennessee including Bristol, Chattanooga, and Decatur. A few extras came all the way from the Philippines. Most were sent to one family. 

What is interesting is how these people spread out but continued to write back home. We don’t have and don’t expect to have are the letters outbound. 

There are two major challenges: interpreting the hand writing, being faithful and accurate to the subject. Folks back then (before email) wrote about lot of things dear to them. I wonder how much of that is lost in the ease of email? The hand writing is from easy to brutal. I have to wonder how some of it ever was understood. Transcribing punctuation and spelling gets easier with each letter but also becomes habit forming. I have to switch between (dont) and (don’t) enough times my head aches.

 I am still interested in knowing more. There is little information in the letters about who belongs to who. We can see what’s going on in the writer’s place but never the reader’s place. For now, transcribing comes first. Someday we’ll post them to the website at www.heritageall.org. 

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