Transcription help needed...willing to barter for your time

Question

I need someone very proficient in deciphering some documents from the 1800s in particular a will that I need to help sort out the children of a particular ancestor since birth records are not available.  What I am proposing since I know your time is valuable is a trade....I'm really good at basic documentation on profiles...finding census records, birth and death information if it is available and the occasional gem of a will or such that I stumble over in the course of my searches.  Basically the sometimes tedious work of pulling all readily available sources together in one place for your ancestors. The will I need transcribed is 18 pages long. In return for someone transcribing it, I will gladly take on 18 ancestors of yours that need basic information added with documentation (official record sources not family trees) and do my best to flesh them out as far as possible for you. I am disabled so don't have the ability to do more than Internet grunt work but am perfectly willing to do this to free up time for you to transcribe the will and perhaps dig deeper on some of your more difficult ancestor issues.

 

So anyone interested in bartering their time?

Answer 1

Can you email it to me and let me take a look?
I'll then let you know if I can read it.

Answer 2

Sandra:

I can read about 60% of the documents, and infer or guess about another 25% of what is written from my general legal knowledge; however, if what you are really after is the names of the heirs of Elijah Dehart, look at page 12 where a notice published in the Virginia Patriot newspaper lists everyone.  This is not a will.  It is a legal action brought by the executor of his estate (his wife having been name as co-executor and declining to serve) on behalf of certain heirs and wife against two heirs and spouses who evidently live out of state for authority to sell lands and slaves and divide the proceeds as directed by the will.  So we get the intents of the will but not the actual instrument.  See if p. 12 does it for you; if not, I can work on a transcription.  One of the documents is the executor's report to the Chancery Court on the prices he got for selling the slaves and to whom.  Other pages are simply the backs of pleadings listing the plaintiff and defendants and add nothing.

Comments

Thanks for looking at it and I will let you know. I'm still new to going through the legal documents beyond the basics for genealogy and my eyesight is bad enough that some of the documents give me a real migraine when trying to decipher them. This particular group of Deharts seem to have done quite a bunch of intermarrying between cousins I think and everyone named their kids the same in the case of the boys it appears so trying to sort them out and be actually accurate with who belongs to who is a bit of a headache.