Thomas Lincoln Casey completed the Washington Monument
Now you can help complete the Casey Family Papers
Become a Virtual Volunteer
Thomas Lincoln Casey and his son Edward Pearce Casey transformed Washington D.C. with their work on iconic buildings including the Washington Monument and the Thomas Jefferson Building of the Library of Congress. More than 40,500 pages from their professional and personal papers (part of the larger Casey Family Papers Collection) provide fascinating insight into Washington politics and the private lives of this powerful New England family.
Help make the Casey Family Papers even more accessible by transcribing the handwritten documents. Do as much or as little as you’d like, when and where you’d like. Work at your own pace and choose what interests you most from letters, diaries, financial records, military records, notebooks, legal documents, architectural drawings, and more.
Transcription is easy and fun. Here’s how.
Getting Started
- Take a few moments to review our tips for transcribing, common abbreviations and misspellings.
- Create an account.
- Log in (on the upper right corner of the page).
- Select a page to transcribe and begin. In-progress transcriptions can be saved and completed later.
- Check the “Mark this transcription as complete” box if you’ve completed the document and it’s ready for review. A Historic New England volunteer reviews completed transcriptions before they are approved.
- Please contact us to ask questions or share comments.
Tips for Transcribing
Historic New England is grateful to the DIY History at the University of Iowa’s Digital Library and the Smithsonian Transcription Center for help in assembling these tips.
- Type what you see. Transcribe grammar, punctuation, and spelling as they appear in the original document.
- Don’t worry about formatting. There is no need to indicate font style, underlined, or bold or italicized words, or to try to match the spacing/indenting of the original. All text should be left justified.
- Transcribe all text. Please try to transcribe all elements of the document, including typewritten text that may appear in a table or a form, etc.
- Consider the context. If you’re having trouble with a word or passage, read “around” it and think about what a likely word would be, or look for other letters and spellings in the document that are similar.
- Indicate if you can’t decipher a word. If you are unsure of a word or phrase, please use [??], or your best guess followed by a question mark within brackets [Boston?], or [town?], or [name?].
- Brackets. Please don’t put anything in brackets unless there are brackets in the original or the text is unintelligible.
- Break between paragraphs, text blocks, and other line breaks. Indicate a break between lines of text by typing the “Enter” key two times.
- Columned data or tables. Scripto uses wiki markup for tables. Transcribe the tables using { } brackets to enclose a table and the pipe symbol | to indicate different columns and the pipe symbol with a hyphen |- to indicate different rows. The pipe symbol on your keyboard is found on the backslash key just above the Enter key.
- Crossed out words. Indicate by typing [strikethrough] or [crossed out] before and after the word or text that has been crossed out.
- Ditto marks in the text. Type out the word that the ditto mark represents in line with the text as you would read it.
- Hyphens or spaces in words. Don’t transcribe hyphens or spaces in words that occur at line breaks.
- Images. You can indicate that there is an image on the page by typing [image]. Transcribe any captions or associated text. If you wish to describe the image, you may do so in the notes field of the page.
- Insertions in the text. Write these out in the sentence in the order you would read it aloud. No need to use brackets, or the caret symbol, to indicate an inserted word.
- Special characters. Please include accents, special characters, and other diacriticals if included in the text.
- Text written in multiple directions on a page. If text is written in multiple directions on a page, transcribe it as it would be read aloud.
- Do your best and then move on. You don’t have to complete the entire page. Every word transcribed helps. Just remember to save frequently and only mark the transcription as complete when the entire page has been transcribed.
Common Civil War abbreviations found in the Casey Family Papers
- Adjt. = Adjutant
- Brig. = Brigade
- Capt. = Captain
- Cav. = Cavalry
- Col. = Colonel
- Col. Inf. = Colored Infantry
- HdQrs. = Head Quarters
- Inf. = Infantry
- Lieut. or Lt. = Lieutenant
- Maj. = Major
- Prov.Gen. = Provost General
- QM = Quarter Master
- Regt. = Regiment
- R.R. = railroad
- Vols. = Volunteers
Common eighteenth- and nineteenth-century abbreviations
- inst. = a date in this month (e.g. the 15th inst.)
- ult. = a date in the previous month (5th ult.)
- &c = etcetera
Common misspellings and writing conventions
- attacted = attacked
- do = ditto
- evning = evening
- evry = every
- fiew = few
- fs = ss (e.g. mifses = misses)
- greaddeal or great eal or gread eal = great deal
- perhapse = perhaps
- thare = there
- verry = very
- ware = were
Common correspondents
Information on common recurring correspondents found in the Casey papers can be found here.
