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Samuel Sullivan Cox's "Journal of a Tour to Europe" (1851)

This edition is still being developed and proofed. Please do not cite this preview until this notice is removed.
The editors welcome suggestions and corrections (see link above).

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Guide to Reading Samuel Sullivan Cox's Manuscript Journal

The legibility of handwritten documents varies widely. An individual's handwriting may be inherently easy or difficult to read, but the legibility of that same person's handwriting will vary greatly depending on circumstances: infirmity caused by age or ill health, available tools (a dull pen, runny ink, rough paper), surroundings (trying to write in dim light or on a tossing ship), mood (writing in a hurry or under duress), accident (spilled coffee), deliberate alterations (crossing something out), the degradation of the written artifact (fading ink, crumbling paper), and so on. The following methods may help to decipher words that are difficult to read:

• Reading in context. Ask yourself what word is most likely to occupy the spot in the sentence where you are stuck. Look to the topic of the surrounding paragraph or the entire document as well.
• Consulting A Buckeye Abroad. Because Cox expanded his journal into a published book, A Buckeye Abroad (1852), some transcription problems can be solved by consulting the published account of his travels. Especially helpful are the online, searchable editions of A Buckeye Abroad available through the University of Michigan's Making of America collection and the Internet Archive's American Libraries collection (click to access the Making of America edition or the American Libraries edition). Note: For the purposes of diplomatic transcription, keep in mind that even apparently parallel passages in the published book and the manuscript journal may differ.
• Consulting a reference dictionary. The Oxford English Dictionary (OED) provides historical examples of usage and definintions for multiple senses of words, including senses no longer in common use, all of which can help with deciphering historical documents. In addition, online dictionaries such as the OED often provide search features that allow you to use them as "crossword-puzzle" dictionaries—you can replace letters you can't read with a "wild card" character and search for all words that match a pattern (e.g., a search for "f??d" will return "food," "feed," "fend," "fard," and 36 other words. Ohio State University users can log in to use the OED online.
• Comparing letterforms. Often it is helpful to look at known words elsewhere in the document or the person's writing where the letters you think you might be looking at occur. In the table below, we list examples of the numerals 0-9, uppercase and lowercase letters A-Z, and some common marks of punctuation. Because the table provides the examples in word or phrase contexts, one can actually find multiple examples of most letterforms. In a few cases of critical, especially variable, or hard-to-read characters, we provide multiple rows with examples of a given letterform. If a letter doesn't appear in the table (e.g., capital X), no clear example of that letterform occurs in the journal.
• Tracing letters. Sometimes, tracing the word you are trying to decipher, either by looking at the screen and writing on paper or by printing out the page and tracing over the word, can help to solve a transcription problem.
• Having someone else read the letter aloud. Finally, it is often helpful to enlist another pair of eyes. While a partner reads a passage aloud slowly, identifying all capital letters and marks of punctuation, follow along in the manuscript.

Character	Phrase	Example
0	10 o'clock
1	at 12 M. —
2	at 12 M. —
3	Tuesday May 13
4	Wednesday May 14.
5	May 7/51.
6	May 16, 1851
7	May 7/51.
8	Thursday May 8th
9	Friday May 9th
A	All the passengers on
a	(just married yesterday)
B	Battery
b	battery & Castle
C	Left Jersey City
c	Descried
D	Descried
d	Judkins Ret.
d	(just married yesterday)
E	Edith
e	battery & Castle
ee	have I been
e	Left Jersey City
F	Friday May 9th
f	Left Jersey City
G	Near Genoa
g	All the passengers on
H	Have filled
h	All the passengers on
I	have I been
I	"Swate Ireland"
i	Friday May 9th
J	Left Jersey City
j	(just married yesterday)
K	--	--
k	Judkins Ret.
L	Left Jersey City
l	10 o'clock
M	at 12 M. —
m	(just married yesterday)
N	New York
n	Judkins Ret.
n	All the passengers on
O	Old Mortality
o	We moved out most
P	Poor Julia
p	All the passengers on
Q	--	--
q	--	--
R	Judkins Ret.
r	All the passengers on
rr	(just married yesterday)
S	"Swate Ireland"
s	Left Jersey City
long s	All the passengers on
T	Thursday May 8th
t	Left Jersey City
U	U.S.A.
u	et ux
V	Civita Vecchia
v	We moved out most
W	We moved out most
w	swept past the
X	Xenophon & Thucydides
x	et ux
Y	New York
y	Left Jersey City
Z	Zanesville, Ohio
z	--	--
period	Judkins Ret.
question	--	--
quotes	"Swate Ireland"
em dash	at 12 M. —
hyphen	--	--
parentheses	(just married yesterday)
ampersand	battery & Castle
virgule (slash)	May 7/51.
apostrophe	10 o'clock
comma	May 16, 1851