The Ballycastle Blog: Irish Genealogy and More

When reviewing and extracting information from an old handwritten U.S. or Irish document, you should look at the entire document to determine the unique handwriting traits of the official who completed the document long ago. From these unique handwriting traits, you can identify how the official formed the individual letters in words on the document. For example, on a handwritten birth certificate, a person’s surname, written in script, appears to have the letter “r” in it. On closer inspection, comparing the script surname with other script word entries on the certificate reveals that the “r” is actually an “e”. If there is any doubt or question about an illegible name on a document, it is smart to look at all of the handwritten words and entries in the document to help solve the mystery of the illegible name.