Henry Smith Journal 1861 to 1870

Project to transcribe a second journal kept by Henry Smith 1861 – 1870

This project will begin in November 2025. Transcribers will receive hard copy pages by mail or pages can be picked up at the Westport library.

The journal has been digitized. The digitized pages can be viewed at these links:

https://wpthistory.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/Henry-Smith-Journal-1861-to-1870-part-1.pdf

https://wpthistory.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/Henry-Smith-Journal-1861-to-1870-Part-2.pdf

 

The basic guidelines for our transcription project are:

  • transcribe what you see, don’t get too hung up on formatting,
  • do not replicate line breaks
  • use square brackets [] to indicate supplied information.
  • Do not transcribe the accounting figures on the edge of the page.
  • Above each daily entry, transcribe the date and add the month

“Tuesday, April 16th”

 

Capitalization:

  • Modernize capitalization for readability (e.g., proper nouns, first word of a sentence).
  • Capitalize directions when abbreviated (NNW) or when they are part of a proper noun.

Illegible text:

  • If totally unintelligible, type [?] where the word would be in the text.
  • If you are able to make a guess, add a question mark in square brackets at the end of it.

Example: 2 P.M. hauled the ship for the[?] stream & anchored.

Punctuation:

  • Add periods where appropriate if none are used, but do not add any other punctuation.
  • Preserve the use of symbols/special characters such as & and +.

Spelling:

  • Preserve original spelling.
  • If you are able to do so, provide the correct/modern/standardized spelling for things of research value, such as names of people, places, in single square brackets right after the original spelling in the text.
  • Example: … Sommerset [SOMERSET] Village

 

If you find yourself stuck, try the following:

  • Try googling the word, it can often provide suggestions that will help.
  • Consider context and try reading “around” difficult words or passages — think about what a likely word would be.
  • Read the word letter by letter.
  • Compare individual letters to those elsewhere in the document.
  • Approach the word from a different perspective by zooming in or out on the document.
  • Skip it! Come back to it at a later time with fresh eyes