Before You Begin
Transcription Instructions
Read through these before you start. They'll take you five minutes and make your contributions much more useful to the people searching for their families.
We use a two-stage volunteer process to balance speed and quality:
- Anyone can transcribe. No account required. Read the document, type what you see, and save. You can do part of a page - every sentence helps the next person.
- A second volunteer reviews. A different person (not who transcribed it) checks the work and either approves it or sends it back for corrections.
- Completed pages become searchable. Within minutes of a page being completed, the text becomes fully searchable - meaning someone can finally find their ancestor's name in a record that's been unreadable for 150 years.
Why this matters
These records were never designed to be found by the people they document. When you transcribe a bill of sale or a Freedmen's Bureau letter, you're converting a photograph of old handwriting into text that a family can actually search. That name you type might be the breakthrough someone has been looking for for years.
Save vs. Mark for Review
Only click "Complete & Mark for Review" if ALL the text is transcribed correctly. If you still have [[?]] remaining or sections unfinished, click "Save" so others can continue. A completed page should have at most 1–2 [[?]].