Secretary Hand

[John]

I'm desperately indeed of guidance on secretary hand and 17th cent wills, perhaps in the form of transcriptions. The script used bears very little resemblence to any of the available samples|banghead|
About 6 hours work tonight has won me about 80 words out of about 800 and most of them are common and not too helpful, things like "item" and "in the year of our lord god"

John

[Geoffers]

I'm desperately indeed of guidance on secretary hand and 17th cent wills, perhaps in the form of transcriptions. The script used bears very little resemblence to any of the available samples|banghead|
About 6 hours work tonight has won me about 80 words out of about 800 and most of them are common and not too helpful, things like "item" and "in the year of our lord god" John
Secretary Hand - there are so many variations on letter forms and unfortunately by the 17th century it is often no longer the beautifully formed script of a century earlier, but more a rambling mess.

I have a fair bit of experience with the handwriting from transcribing registers, wills and other records - If you have a scanner, feel free to send them to me by e-mail and I'll see if there's owt I can make of it.

Other than that, if you want to plough on and work through it, one of the best little books I bought on handwriting is "Examples of Handwriting 1550-1650" by W S B Buck (publ. Society of Genealogists). I don't know if it's still in print, but is very useful if you can find a copy. If you cannot find one in the shops, but would like to borrow one of my copies - let me know your address and I'll bung it in the post, though I would like it back.

Geoffers
Charlbury, Oxfordshire

[John]

Thanks Geoffers,

that's one more added to my book list. I do really want to plough through it myself, I must be mad! I might however take up your offer when or if I grind to a halt.

John

[Geoffers]

Thanks Geoffers,
that's one more added to my book list. I do really want to plough through it myself, I must be mad! I might however take up your offer when or if I grind to a halt.
JohnFiar enough, I can understand why you'd like to try yourself. The offer stays open if you get stuck.

There is an expensive book of copies at
http://www.crazydiamond.co.uk/products/annboc.html
the website also has examples of Secretary and Basatrd Secretary

Further examples are at:
http://www.catholic-history.org.uk/nwchs/secretary_hand_script.htm

and there is even an online course available:
http://www.english.cam.ac.uk/ceres/ehoc/intro.html

Good luck
Geoffers

[John]

Geoffers,

I know the Cambridge site but the first two are new to me. Mind you, if this will was half as legible as the samples I wouldn't be yelling for help :)
The further in I get the more convinced I am that I was hasty by describing it as secretary hand, it appears to be a combination of several styles overlaid with some plain really bad writing.
Still, it's more fun than a crossword!
Thanks again,

John

[Geoffers]

Geoffers,
I know the Cambridge site but the first two are new to me. Mind you, if this will was half as legible as the samples I wouldn't be yelling for help :)
The further in I get the more convinced I am that I was hasty by describing it as secretary hand, it appears to be a combination of several styles overlaid with some plain really bad writing. Still, it's more fun than a crossword!

Just out of interest and curiosity - what part of the 17th century is this from? The styles of handwriting varied greatly between the start of the century when there was often still a very legible handwriting, through the often scrappy and untidy style of the reign of the traitor Charles Stuart (that'll get some people's hackles raised) and the Commonwealth, then the odd square handwriting that became popular in the 1680's to the start of italic handwriting towards the end of the century.

Geoffers

[John]

Just out of interest and curiosity - what part of the 17th century is this from? .

Geoffers
Just to prove that I am getting somewhere with it, 23 October 1608:).

Now that I've worked out the formulaic parts "in the name of god" "last will and testament" etc I'm making inroads into building an alphabet.

The inventory will be the really fun part, I really will hit a steep learning curve then.

Thanks for your encouragement Geoffers.

John

[BeeE586]

The only real answer to this problem is perseverance and experience. I have been reading 16th and 17th century probate documents for the last 20 odd years and there are still words that defeat me. One help is to obtain a Glossary of terms used; a simple word such as COW could be kye, quy, quye cay and so on. Learn the words for hearth furniture, rackentyne, cob irons, spit, fire shovel etc and the variations of spelling. The letters i and j are often interchangeable and y often comes in the middle of a word where we would use i e.g. jointly could be ioyntlye, wife could be wyffe, fifty could be fyfty or fyftie and so on. Y can also replaces th as in ye, yat, oyerwise the, that, otherwise. Th and y can interchange fader for father, forth for ford, broder for brother.

There are the missed letters which cannot be demonstrated from the keyboard but you will often see a line over the end or in the middle of a word. Thus p (line over) ysh shows that ar has been missed out and the word should read parish w line t line is with yom line is yeoman put line is pewter etc. It is often a matter of guesswork as to what is missed out, as it could be ar er ur an en em.

Watch out for f and the long s - they often look the same as do double l and double t. Learn to recognise a few simple words. Most documents begin "In the name of god amen" and end with "In witness whereof I affix my hand the seale the year and day first above written" or something similar and in these two phrases you have more than half the alphabet for comparison. Above all, do not expect modern spelling - you might find a word spelled three different ways on the same line and none of them will be the way we would spell it.

I hope you find this helpful Eileen

[John]

you might find a word spelled three different ways on the same line and none of them will be the way we would spell it.
I hope you find this helpful Eileen
Eileen, forget words spellrd three different ways in a line, I'm getting letters formed three different ways in a line and that's not counting the difference in first and last letters:D
But seriously, there is some good stuff there. Can you suggest a glossary of terms or is it just a case of building one as I go along?
One thing that had me puzzled for a while were the line fillers, I've never come across them before and thought that perhaps the writer had slipped into arabic!

John

[Peter Goodey]

John

A book I've found useful is "The Local Historian's Glossary of Words and Terms" by Joy Bristow, published by Countryside Books, ISBN 1 85306 707 5.

As you may have gathered, my copy is never far away from my genealogical workstation:D

[BeeE586]

John All the hundreds of documents I have transcribed are for parishes in north Derbyshire and the Glossary I used by Rosemary Milward was largely of local terms. Dialect does come into it of course - are the documents you are reading from your side of the Pennines ? If so, terminology may vary. I originally attended a class about thirty years ago run by Sheffield University - do you have anything of the sort in Manchester ? I presume you have a good magnifying glass, I couldn't manage without one.

Good Luck Eileen

[Peter Goodey]

Eileen

While you're there...|help|

Going off at a tangent, I have an inventory here (1673 Nottinghamshire - not a million miles from your neck of the woods) where I'm stuck on one word. I wonder if you can help?

"two carrages in the barne.....
one chanch (?) of hay....
straw in the same barne....)

What might "chanch" mean? I'm pretty sure those are the letters in the word.

Do you have any thoughts on this?

[Geoffers]

Going off at a tangent, I have an inventory here.......
one chanch (?) of hay....
What might "chanch" mean?
I don't suppose it could be an attempt to spell 'tranche' (a portion), could it?

Geoffers
Charlbury, Oxfordshire

[BeeE586]

Peter, hello That is a puzzle: I have found hay in the meadow, hay in the fold, hay in the barn, in loads, in stacks, but anything resembling "chanch" - never. Tranche is a good thought but was a value given which might indicate a quantity ? Depending on the time of year it could be uncut and "chanch" could be a field name. A value for 'crops on the ground' was a regular feature and we often found a reference such as 'corn on the Mill Furlong in the Town Field' mentioned. Is anything like this likely ? I will think and ask around and come back to you if I find anything.

Eileen

[Peter Goodey]

Eileen & Geoffers;

Rather than me tell you what I think it looks like, I've put a scan of it here
http://www.inertia.demon.co.uk/gen/

It's a scan of the bottom half of an A3 document...bit big I'm afraid... sorry if you've got a slow connection...would you mind having a look? I think I'm OK with the rest of the page except 'Chanch' (3rd line down).

Thanks.

[Geoffers]

Rather than me tell you what I think it looks like.......I think I'm OK with the rest of the page except 'Chanch' (3rd line down).
Thanks.
Hello Peter
I'd agree that the word is 'Chanch' - so it comes down to the meaning, which may be interpreted from context and local dialect/measures.

I don't know of a measure known as a chanch - I've been browsing through a couple of dozen books without finding one. I don't know Nottinghamshire dialect measures or if there are any.

The reference is to a quantity of hay and straw in a barn - presumably just placed on the floor of the barn, possibly in a crush so that it can be forked out for use. So, how is that quantity measured? Well, the straw and hay are valued so there's an estimated cost - but unless baled it it difficult to describe precisely the volume it takes. This is a long way of bringing me around to thinking that my initial suggestion of it being an attempt to spell 'tranche' - an indeterminate portion - may well be correct.

Geoffers
Charlbury, Oxfordshire

[BeeE586]

Seeing the word in context obviously my suggestion of a field name was way off the mark, although we have found strange mixtures of things mentioned together !!!

Having seen the scan I agree with your interpretation of the word, but it is quite a high valuation for an indeterminate heap - 2 carriages £4; hay £2 - the same value as a carriage. I am not very familiar with 'tranche' although I have met it, and since it does not seem to appear in any reference books, surely it must be very a very local term. Do you know any very old farming families; is there in Notts. anything similar to the Museum of Lincolnshire Life who may have records of ancient measures ? Is it worth posting on the Nottinghamshire County Forum - someone, somewhere must know and you have got us very interested. I shall watch this space.

Eileen

[Lesley Robertson]

In addition to those sites, I have found the help given on the Scottish Documents site very useful. I got quite a long way with a couple of wills using it - but then had to buy the teach-yourself pack from the Scottish Genealogy Society to get it finished.

[Peter Goodey]

Thanks for your comments folks.

The only thing I can say about 'tranche' is that the village involved was Upton about one mile from Southwell and other sources indicate that the yeomen of Upton were frequently in Southwell for business (ecclesiastical & manorial as well as markets etc) or social reasons. If the word 'tranche' was in use at that time for some legal or quasi-legal purpose it is possible that they'd picked the word up and decided that they might as well be a bit pretentious in a probate inventory.

The Oxford Essential Dictionary of Foreign Terms in English (online version) says of 'tranche' : "L15 A cutting, a cut; a piece cut off, a slice". Unfortunately, it seems a bit coy about explaining the abbreviations. Can anyone hazard a guess about what 'L15' means? (legal, 15th century???)

I think I'll drop a humble ("I know it's not your job but...") message to Notts Archives & the University and also the Museum of English Rural Life. And of course the obvious place to ask is s.g.b (if they're not too busy arguing about people being rude to each other).

By the way, I don't think the date appeared on the portion of the image I put up. It was May 1673. I'm just a townie - I've no idea what the month of May implies in terms of stocks of hay.

[John]

Dialect does come into it of course - are the documents you are reading from your side of the Pennines ?
Good Luck Eileen
Now here I have to hold my hands up and prove my lack of sanity:o
I was in Manchester Central Library last week and this will was being passed round as unreadable. Now it was a good clear photocopy and hating to hear that something can't be done, I opened my mouth and said I thought I could get it transcribed meaning to bully an old friend of mine into taking a look at it. I thought I'd cut the work down by lining it out and picking out the more obvious easy words. Well, each word I did made another word easier, so I decided it was time to move back from 18th and 19th cent stuff and do it myself. Anyway, the short of it is that I'm still waiting for the owner to give me clues as to location etc, I assume that it's Lancashire but I'm not 100% certain.
I'm slowly plodding through it, wishing the thing was as clear as Peters example.

John

[John]

one chanch (?) of hay....
Peter,
one definition of "shank" is a remaining part.
OK, it doesn't really fit but....
Thought two, could it share a root with chancel, an enclosed space?

John

[uksearch]

John,

I have emailed her several times.It's still bouncing.If memory serves the area is north Lancs.

[Ladkyis]

There is a place in Pontypool Gwent called "Tranch" usually referred to as The Tranch in conversation as in "oh he lives up the Tranch". The population of this area of South east Wales was greatly increased when the industrial revolution took hold and the black gold - coal - was discovered close to the ironstone that changed the world. A lot of people came in from Somerset, Dorset, Gloucestershire, Herefordshire AND a lot of miners from Nottinghamshire and Derbyshire too. It doesn't take much stretch of the imagination to think that perhaps the place name came from "foreign" English word does it?
Ann

[Peter Goodey]

"...someone, somewhere must know and you have got us very interested. I shall watch this space."

I asked the question on s.g.b and Eve McLaughlin (no less!) thinks that the word might possibly mean "tranch" (tranche?) "a chopped chunk from a truss".

I am right in thinking, aren't I, that there wouldn't be a lot of hay left in May? But then, as I mentioned, I'm a townie!

I think I'll stick with "tranch(e)". Thanks for looking at it, everyone.

So Geoffers has Eve McLaughlin's seal of approval! And mine of course:)

[Geoffers]

I asked the question on s.g.b and Eve McLaughlin (no less!) thinks that the word might possibly mean "tranch" (tranche?) "a chopped chunk from a truss".
Whereever s.g.b is, I'm glad that someone else has confirmed my idea. I still haven't been able to find anything else that may fit and am going to have to start putting some books back on their shelves, before I forget where I had them stored.

I am right in thinking, aren't I, that there wouldn't be a lot of hay left in May? But then, as I mentioned, I'm a townie!
It would depend to a large extent on the weather - how the crops had grown and how hard the previous winter had been.

1673 was (I think) still in the 'little ice-age' so hay and straw may well have been at a premium - if this is the case, maybe your chap was far-sighted and had cornered the local market??

Geoffers
Charlbury, Oxfordshire

[BeeE586]

I was intriqued by a term I had never heard before, entered as a search 'old farming terms' and found a site farm-direct.co.uk who offered a service 'ask a farmer'. This is their reply.

"I can find no direct reference to a chanch of hay. However, in the 17th century chanch was a spelling of chance, at least it was used as such by Isaac Newton.

See http://www.newtonproject.ic.uk/texts/cul3996_n.html

If the probate document is using chanch instead of chance there is a possible explanation. A "chance lot" of any commodity is a quantity obtained not by design but as a product of some other operation. For example, it may be the remainder after a winter's feeding or the excess crop after a quantity had been sold.

Another candidate, if the handwriting is bad or hard to read (it wasn't) is "Charge". A charge is a load, in this case it might have been a cartload.

As a rough guide, hay prices at the end of the 18th century were about £1 a ton, but this varied considerably according to the quality and time of year. An acre of first-class water meadow might produce over 2 tons of low grade hay per year whilst an upland meadow might only manage half a ton of high quality hay per acre."

Just another thought to throw into the discussion !!!

Eileen :D

Why didn't the smilie work for :confused: in the title ??

[Peter Goodey]

Crikey Eileen!

You have been busy. :D

That all sounds very plausible - or at least there's some rationale there to make it seem more than just a wild guess.
I think I'll run with 'chance' and make a note of 'charge'. Mind you I've already got a very long footnote to my transcription of this one so I'll throw 'em all in with 'chance' as favourite.

BTW I think the village was OK for meadow. I think they were able to deliberately flood it but on the other hand drainage was OK. Other documentation and my untutored eye support this belief.

I well I think I owe you a little drinkie for Christmas...a virtual one I suppose :(

Thanks very much for all that |bowdown|

[Cornish Maid]

Could the word you are looking at be "clanch"? Hereabouts, they talk of clanches, being a sort of large feeding trough type thing, the sort horses eat out of, to stop them wuffing the lot in one go.

Just a thought.