Read an old handwritten letter from a photo

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Two letters from our shelf, as FamilyLore read them

A dotted underline marks a word FamilyLore was unsure of; [?] is its own note on a doubtful reading.

Johann Kilian to Gotthold Albert Gumlich · 20 May 1858

1. 1Serbin (Low Pinoak Settlement) Bastrop County,
2. 2Texas, den 20sten Mai 1858.
3. 3Geliebter Bruder im Herrn!
4. 4Den Empfang Deines lieben Schreibens vom 16ten März 1858
5. 5bescheinige ich hiermit schon jetzt, weil ich den Andreas Kiesling[?]
6. 6auf den Todtenschein für seine Eltern nicht zu lange warten

See the whole reading and its translation →

V. K. Arsenyev to A. M. Ivanov · 20 Jul / 2 Aug 1910

1. 4Глубокоуважаемый
2. 5Александръ Михайловичъ!
3. 6Не знаю, найду ли я извиненія въ глазахъ
4. 7Юліи Александровны и въ Вашихъ за свое
5. 8долгое молчаніе. Не объясните это худо,
6. 9ради Бога! Одно изъ лучшихъ воспоминаній

See the whole reading and its translation →

Also on the shelf: Leo Meter’s Easter letter of 1943, in Sütterlin · Lapatin document of 1792, in 18th-century Russian cursive

How well it reads, measured

Measured on letters whose holders published a transcription made by hand, read the same way your page is. The figures rest on a few pages so far and move as pages are added. How well FamilyLore reads →

Questions

Can’t ChatGPT do this?

A general chatbot can read some old handwriting, sometimes well, but it usually hands you clean text with no sign of which words it guessed, and its makers publish no figures for these scripts; FamilyLore marks the words it is unsure of and publishes how often it reads correctly, in the table above.

What if it reads a word wrong?

Tap a word to see the other readings FamilyLore weighed, and correct it if you know better. The translation is redone from your correction. Most misread words carry a mark, but not every one, so a name or a date that matters is worth checking against the photo.

Do I need to know which hand my letter is in?

No. If you aren’t sure, upload the page and FamilyLore detects the alphabet. If you know whether the letter is German, Slavic or Jewish family papers, choosing that tile helps narrow the era.

Who sees my pages?

Only you. A page becomes public only if you share it, and then only to people who have the link. Deleting your account deletes the photos you uploaded.

What FamilyLore doesn’t read well yet

• Registers, church books and census lists set out in columns. They aren’t measured yet, so we can’t tell you how well it reads them.
• Faded pages, and letters that run across two pages. You can upload them, but faded pages are measured on only a few pages so far.
• Documents in Latin or Polish. FamilyLore doesn’t take them yet.
• Hebrew and Yiddish pages: you can upload them, but the benchmark has not measured them yet.

From photo to text in three steps

1. 1

   Take a photo of the page

   Lay the sheet flat, in daylight and without flash. A phone photo of the whole page is enough.

2. 2

   Upload it

   “German (Kurrent)” is already chosen. If you know roughly when it was written, pick the era.

3. 3

   Read it

   You get the page as it was written, in modern spelling, and in English. Correct a word you know better yourself.