A New Technology Helps Interpret Old Handwriting
An AI Experiment Aided in Understanding the Lives of My Ancestors
I am fortunate to have a copy of a series of handwritten letters dated between 1889 and 1894 from my 2x Great-Grandmother, Ellen (Geehan) Devine to her younger sister, Bridget. About 3 months ago I wanted to see if Artificial Intelligence (AI) could transcribe - and at that time, it wouldn’t even try, stating “my current abilities are not advanced enough.” I guess I appreciated the honesty.
Things change pretty fast these days, so a few weeks ago, in the spirit of experimentation, I tried again and I was shocked at the results.
To be fair, professional transcribers of these types of documents can offer much more than AI. They are experts in the language of the time period and the “genre” of a particular document being transcribed (e.g., legal documents) and can provide insights and transcriptions accordingly. Of course that comes with a cost and since the handwriting is mostly legible in my set of correspondence, and I enjoy trying new things, I wanted to see what AI could offer. As it turned out, there are a few things about the process of leveraging AI for this purpose that led to a more meaningful appreciation of these letters than I may not have otherwise had:
Speed
I have five letters that were written over a five-year period. Each letter is several pages long. My copies are good, but they are copies of letters from well over a 100 years ago. There is some fading, the spelling is consistent with the spelling of a semi-educated woman of the late 1800’s and, of course, it’s written in fanciful cursive - or what, AI calls “historic handwriting.” In short, it is a slow process to individually read and transcribe. But, as you may know, AI is able to process information lightning fast, so uploading images of the letters allowed me to have these five letters - a combined 19 pages of “historic handwriting” – transcribed within a few moments. And a bonus was that it not only transcribed the letters, it also provided a summary and, most interestingly, a few insights! The lightning quick process allowed me to focus on the accuracy of the transcription. There were a few inaccuracies, which was disappointing. But had I been transcribing these manually, I would only have been able to do one at a time.
Consistency
This is where the AI tool disappointed me a bit. Even though I requested the transcriptions of the various letters within the same chat log within just a few moments of each other, the results, when it came to providing a summary of the letter along with insights, were wildly different. The first letters had tons of detail in the summary and insights, while the later ones lacked. In fact, it didn’t offer any until I gave it an additional prompt, asking it to match the style of the previous ones. Even though the later letters had plenty of details from which to pull, the results were mediocre. I think AI was bored with the effort. LOL. But, I’m a glass-half-full kind of gal, so that’s OK. At minimum, AI gave me a template approach to follow so I could pull my own summary and insights. Given that 3 months ago it couldn’t even read the handwriting, I think what it was able to do this month was incredible. And if I gave it a whirl again a few months down the road, I may be even more impressed.
Nuanced Insights
Ellen Geehan was born 3 Apr 1864. She wrote the first letter in my collection to her younger sister Bridget who was living with an Aunt and Uncle when she was 25 years old. The first letter was written about one month before she was to be married. The last letter in my collection was written after five years of marriage. The evolution of her sentiments, the type of news she shared and even the fact that the “start-stop” within a single letter increases as she ages shows how Ellen was growing up.
The first letter is full of girlish gossip. You can almost hear the giggles that may have been coming from her as she wrote it. The early letter appears to have been written from beginning to end within one sitting - indicating a lack of other nagging responsibilities. By the time the last letter was written, five years later, it’s evident that she had started and stopped writing, and came back to continue the letter days later. As a farmer’s wife with two children, a home and elderly parents, she obviously had a lot of responsibilities. I imagine that she was constantly interrupted or too tired to stay up and write in a single stream. The type of news she shared in the later letters was based more on her own growing family than the shenanigans of the residents of the county.
Reviewing the transcriptions of this series of letters all at one time made a huge difference in the type of genealogical insights I was able to glean. For me, one of the greatest things in this series is the evolution of my great-great-grandmother over the period in which they were written. I feel like I was watching her grow up. I don’t think that I would have noticed that had these not have been transcribed so quickly.
F.A.N. Club
The other obvious advantage of transcribing these letters (whether via AI or otherwise) is information about the F.A.N. club – the friends, associates and neighbors of my ancestor!
One common thread throughout the five letters is an update on the life of another sister and an occasional update on a brother. From one of the letters I was able to finally understand why brother Michael left the family hometown in Southern Minnesota – something I’ve always wondered!
In another letter, Ellen wrote about the telephone line that was installed the previous spring and runs along the road beside their home. She says that she can hear the line ringing from inside on cold winter nights! This type of historical/social detail is fascinating!
The most exciting thing is that this series of five letters is from Ellen to her sister Bridget. In those letters she often references their other sister Catherine. I have a series of seven letters from Catherine to Bridget that I haven’t delved into yet! It will be fun to triangulate the details as I continue working on telling the stories of these ancestors.
Is this what you would have expected from AI for this type of genealogical work?
I would never have thought to try this! What a great resource for biographers too— thanks for sharing.
I actually use my iPads dictate feature to transcribe the old letters I have. I just read them out loud and my iPad captures it. This approach works well for me and provides an added bonus as my husbands likes to listen in as I read these old family letters too.