ENFacsimile
Transcription
transcribe-the-full-text-here: Any or either of my heirs Executors or assignes may hereafter have of to or in ye said granted twelve Acres of land and premises with all profits Issues timber trees swamps bogs water runes lakes within ye said bound or wtelse to ye same is in any wise apptaining to Have and to Hold unto him ye Anthony Wright his heirs and assigne all and singular ye said granted land and premises with its apptences to ye only [proper use] and behoofe of him ye said Anthony Wright his heirs assigne for ever and the said Joseph Doth for himself his heirs Executors and assign further covenant to and with the said Antoney that It shall and may be lawfull for him ye said Anthony his heirs and assign quietly and peaceably to have hold posess and enjoy ye said granted land and premises forever without ye lawfull let or molestation of him ye said Joseph his heirs or assinges or any other person or persons lawfully claiming for by or under him or any or either of them notwithstanding any former grant mortgage or sale wtsoever over and ye same to ye said Anthony his heirs and assigne forever to warrant and Defend according as before is expressed and ye said Joseph hath given ye said Anthony Lawfull possession ye same by Delivery of [turf] and twiggs and by these presence In Witness whereof I have here unto sett my hand and seal ye eight day of Aprill in ye year of our lord one six hundred ninety five... Joseph Ludlam [seal]
insert-the-birth-record-into-the-spreadsheet-below
| Name of Child | Sex | Date of Birth | Date of Certificate | Mother's Name | Location (Town of...) | Enslaver | Transcriber's Notes |
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Notes and Questions
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Hello, this was my first transcription. I tried to follow conventions, maintain original spelling, etc. In some cases, I even googled a phrase to see if it made any sense, like "turff and twiggs". In another case, I bracketed [Antoney], which should probably be "Anthony": the actual text does not have the "h", so I wasn't sure if it should be transcribed with our without the "h". And several words I just could not figure out, after reading and re-reading, and looking for other examples within this text of how letters / words are written. The word after "water" early on, stumped me. At first I thought it could be "sources", but then looking at other text, it almost looks like the word ends in "ines" or "unes". And there is also a spot where it looks like someone added / altered the original text, but it is hard to tell. Near the beginning, the word "else" doesn't seem to match the other handwriting, and there appears to be something else that was written above it - "whatever else?". Hard to tell, but maybe the source document makes it clearer.
Hello!
First, thank you for volunteering! In my opinion, this is the most difficult book to work with and I personally struggle with it sometimes myself. Some of these words are abbreviated Old English and Dutch-translated words, and colonial-era terminology about exchanges/transfer of land and property that we don't use today. After skimming through your entry, a lot of what you typed is correct; I will edit this page for you when I go through the reviews. You can keep doing as you are and mark words as illegible or make guesses of what you think they might be. If you would like to look a bit closer than what this site's preview can give, you can visit the Municipal Archives' digital collections website [I will insert the link below] which has a more flexible zoom feature and may give you a better view of the pages.
It might be helpful to note that some of these words are shortened from their full form. In this page, that "pp uss" is actually "proper use" which I only know from reading similar documents in other books. You were correct in transcribing it as you saw it, and that's something that I would come in and fix since it's more of a legibility obstacle for the reader instead of just a misspelling or difference in formatting. Another example: "apptaining" is appertaining, and "apptence" is appurtenance, which can look annoyingly similar in some writing. Additionally, because of the style of cursive used at the time, some letters may look like each other, particularly lowercase f and s, as you may see in other books in our collection. Typically, the long s is used in double-s spellings, so "assess" may look like "afsefs" or "Congress" will be "Congrefs." Lowercase e's may look like o's when they're really just written as a rotated or backwards "e". On this page, the word after water is "runes", meaning runs, or a type of stream/body of water, so an extra letter was added there.
If you keep doing this book, as a tip, I suggest handwriting the portions that are confusing to get the flow of the text in your brain, so the words can come a bit more naturally as you think about what you're writing down versus typing. You can also look at some books from this time period on Internet Archive (www.archive.org) to familiarize yourself with similar documents and their phrasing and/or spelling of words. They don't have these specific documents, but they do have other New Amsterdam and Oyster Bay books that have been transcribed as they're seen; their "Full Text" download option is also searchable, if you want to look up words that way. Doing these things were incredibly helpful to me, when I started reading historic handwriting.
Lastly, I want to say that I don't expect submissions to be perfect! The documents themselves are far from it, so it's absolutely okay if you see something that makes no sense to you whatsoever and you just say you don't know it and move on. You did a great job with this page, just keep trying your best and noting which pages you would like to be reviewed.
Sorry for the essay and thank you again!
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This is a direct link to this book on our digital collections website or you can go to https://nycrecords.access.preservica.com/ click Collections, the dropdown menu at the top of the page, scroll down to Old Town Records, click Queens > Oyster Bay > Town Records, Book 4. To find other books, you can use the file name listed in the About sections of each book (it should look like an extended MSS0004_ code) and search these codes on the Preservica site to find the particular book you want to work on. The pages are the same; page 39 here is also page 39 there. I hope this is helpful!