Y'all, I've been working on the Anti-Slavery Project transcriptions whenever I can't bear to grade/ program any more* and it is really interesting. It's all this correspondence between abolitionists, with personal notes about carpet and deliveries and houseguests mixed in with a whooooole variety of abolitionist propaganda, business, and organizing.
However! The one I have just done was written from Paris in 1838 by Some Dude who a) has truly atrocious handwriting (separate from the usual manuscript whatever-ness); b) doesn't cross 't' except when he does; c) doesn't believe in punctuation; and d) sounds like a complete nutter. I have gotten through two pages of unpunctuated rambling and... wow.
(It's a lot harder to transcribe letters that don't make any sense, turns out.)
Takes all sorts, I guess.
* I took a semester-long class on Reading Terrible Old Handwriting (i.e. Paleography) when I was studying abroad. It basically consisted of 'Here's how to start, now go read manuscripts for about 100 hours, bye.'
Yes. That's what I regularly feel like reading handwriting in languages I have very little command of.
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