Dutch · c. 1550–1700
Read seventeenth-century Dutch paperwork
In a fast Dutch secretary hand e collapses into c, r into v, and long ſ differs from f only by half a crossbar, while the sum in the margin is written ƒ 33-15-0 with a ditto mark standing in for the month. Evidano transcribes notarial acts, merchant papers, company charters and private letters from the Republic, keeps the money columns beside the entries they belong to, and marks where the writer switches into a rounder Latin script for a foreign name.
Sample pages
Real pages from public collections, shown beside their transcriptions. Pages whose transcription is still being checked are marked.
Westfries Archief, Hoorn, 1606, with endorsements to 1650 · Source · Public domain
Transcription being verified
The Westfries Archief has described the certificate and the circumstances of its identification in 2010; neither the printed formula on the recto nor the dividend endorsements on this side have been published as a line-by-line transcription.
What the model is told to watch for: Expect rapid secretary and commercial cursives with looped capitals, long ascenders, and compact joining in letters, notarial acts, and account books. Distinguish long s (ſ) from f, e from c, r from v, and ij from y, and watch for ae, oe, and consonant groups written with minimal pen lifts. Note merchant abbreviations, guilders and stuivers notation, fractions, ditto marks, column totals, signatures, and changes into Latin script for foreign names.
FelixArchief, Antwerp, Notariaat Antwerpen, N1487, November 1608 · Source · Public domain
Transcription
The whole of the first fragment, marginal heading and body, from the proofread Wikisource page. Letters the transcriber supplied for abbreviation marks stand in square brackets, words the notary struck out are given here between ‹ ›, and […] marks where the fragment breaks off; the transcription keeps the notary’s spelling and his lack of capitals.
[Nov]emb. 1608 Inventaris ende specificatie die Maria ende Constantie de la Chiesa, ten overstaen van Jacques Maurique ‹ende› Jeronimus van Ghindertalen ende Jan Francico de la Chiesa. [doorgehaalde tekst] zijn makende ende in scrift stellende van alle ende iegelycke de rurende, haeffelycke goed[en], ‹brd› brieven, papieren ende munimenten by ‹den voorz overledene› wylen Jacomo de la Chiesa, heuren vader, acht[er]gelaten ende in zynen sterfhuys bevond[en], zynde de selve wylen Jacomo ov[er]leden des nachts tusschen den viien ende viijen daghen deser maent novemb[er] in desen jare 1608 tzijnen huyse ind[e] Huydevettersstrate, alhier tantwerpen gestaen, zijnde ten selven sterfhuys bevonden tnavolgende […]
Transcription from FelixArchief, Notariaat Antwerpen, N1487, transcription proofread on Wikisource (CC0 1.0).
Nationaal Archief, The Hague, 1.05.01.01, inv. no. 13, 3 June 1621 · Source · Public domain
Transcription
The forty-one lines of the page, from the Nationaal Archief transcription published on the Wikimedia Commons file page. Line breaks are the manuscript’s, marked in the original transcription with a slash; letters supplied for the clerk’s contractions are given in round brackets, as voors(eijde); spelling and capitals are the clerk’s own, including the repeated den in the second line.
De Staten Generael der Vereenichde Nederlanden, Allen den den genen die dese jegenwoordige sullen sien ofte hooren lesen, Saluyt. Doen te weeten, dat wy bemerckende den welstant deser Landen ende welvaeren vande Ingesetenen van dien, principalyck te bestaen bijde Scheepvaert ende Coophandel, die van allen ouden tijden uuyt deselve Landen geluckelyck, ende met grooten Zegen gedreven is geweest op alle Landen ende Coninckrijcken. Soo Ist, dat wij, begerende dat de voors(eijde) Ingesetenen nijet alleen by hare voorgaende navigatie, trafficque ende hanteringe werden geconserveert. Maer oock dat haer trafficque, soo veel mogelyck, souden mogen toenemen, bysonder in conformiteyt vande Tractaten, Alliancien, Verbonden, ende Entrecoursen opde trafficque, ende Zeevaert, met andere Princen, Republicquen, ende Volckeren eertijts gemaeckt, die wy in allen deesen punctuelyck verstaen onderhouden, ende achtervolcht te moeten worden. Ende wy bij experientie bevinden dat sonder gemeene hulpe, assistentie, ende middelen van een generaele Compaignie nijet vruchtbaerlijcx in de Quartieren hiernaer gedesigneert, gedreven, beschermpt ende gemainteneert en can werden. Mits de groote avonturen van Zeerooverien, extorsien, ende anderssints, die op soo groote verre reysen sijn vallende. Soo hebben wy mits verscheijden, ende andere pregnante redenen, ende consideratien, ons daertoe moveren(de) met rijpe deliberatie van raede, ende uuijt hoochdringende oorsaecken goetbevonden, dat de Schipvaert, handelinge, ende Commercien Inde quartieren van WestIndien ende Africa, ende anderen hiernae gedesigneert, voortaen nijet anders en sal werden gedreven, dan met gemeene vereenichde macht vande Coopluyden, ende Ingesetenen deser Landen, ende dat tot dien eijnde opgerecht sal werden eene generaele Compaignie, die wy uuijt sonderlinge affectie, tot den gemeenen welstant, ende omme den Ingesetenen van dien te conserveren in goede neeringe ende welvaert, sullen mainteneren ende verstercken met onse hulpe, faveur ende assistentie, voor soo veel den jegenwoordigen Staet, ende gestaltenisse der Landen eenichsints can verdragen, ende exemptien hiernae volgende. Te weeten dat binnen den tijt van vierentwintich jaeren nijemant vande Ingeboornen, ofte Ingesetenen deser Landen, anders dan alleen uuijt den naem van dese Vereenichde Compaignie uuijt dese Vereenichde Nederlanden, nochte oock van buijten deselve Landen sal moegen vaeren, ofte negotieren opde Custen ende Landen van Africa vande Tropico Cancri, tot Cabo de bonne Esperanca, nochte opde Landen van America, ofte WestIndien, beginnende vant Zuyteijnde van Terra Nova, doorde Straten van Magellanes, Le Maire, ofte andere Straten ende passagien, daerontrent gelegen, tot de Strate van Anian, soo opde Noortzee, als opde Zuytzee, nochte op eenige Eylanden aende eene, ende andere Zijde, ende tusschen beyde gelegen, mitsgaders opde Austraelsche, ofte Zuyderlanden streckende ende leggende tusschen beyde de Meridianen, raeckende Int Oosten de Cap de bonne Esperance, ende Int Westen het Oosteynde van Nova Guinea Incluys. Ende soo wie sonder consent van dese Compaignie hem sal vervorderen
Transcription from Nationaal Archief transcription of the WIC charter, first page, on the Wikimedia Commons file page (CC BY-SA 4.0).
Houghton Library, Harvard University, MS Eng 870 (14), February 1636 · Source · Public domain
Transcription
The letter as printed in Hofstede de Groot’s corpus of Rembrandt documents, no. 47, with his line breaks; his section numbers § 1–§ 5 are omitted here, and three words that the Internet Archive scan of the 1906 volume broke apart (ackoorderen, dienstwillygen, vertrouwende) have been closed up against the manuscript. The address written on the outside of the folded sheet is not part of the page shown.
Myn heer myn goetgunstijge heer Huygens hoope dat UE. gaerne syn Excellensy sal aenseggen dat ick seer naerstigh doende ben met die drie passy stucken voorts met bequaemheyt af te maeken die syn Excellensy my selfs heeft geordyneert, een graf legging ende een verrysenis en een Hemelvaert Christy. de selvyge ackoorderen met opdoening en afdoeninge vant chruys Christij. van welcken drie voornoemden stuckens een van opgemaeckt is daer Christus ten Hemel opvaert ende die ander twee ruym half gedaen syn en soo syn Excellensy dit opgemaeckte stuck voor eerst gelieft te hebben dan ofte die drie 't seffens. Myn heer biddende daer van te laeten weeten op dat ick sy pryns: Excellensy in sy lussten ten besten dienen mag. en ken oock niet naer laeten volgens myn dienstwillygen Kunst myn heer te vereeren van myn jongste werck vertrouwende dat my ten beste sal afgenomen werden neffens myne groetenissen aen Ul. allen Godt in gesontheyt bevoolen. myn heer dienst willygen ende geneegen dienaer Rembrandt. woon naest den Lyonaeus boereel nieuwe doel straet
Transcription from C. Hofstede de Groot, Die Urkunden über Rembrandt (1575–1721) (The Hague, 1906), no. 47, via Internet Archive (Public domain).
The hands of a paper republic
The seventeenth-century Netherlands wrote more per head than any state in Europe, and most of it survives: notarial protocols recording contracts, freight, marriages and quarrels; letters between merchants and their factors; ledgers, share registers and bills of exchange; resolutions of town councils, chambers and the States. The everyday script is a Dutch form of the Gothic cursive that the rest of northern Europe also used — sloping, tightly looped, with a small body height and enormous capitals — written with a quill cut fine enough to run for a whole clause without lifting. Alongside it the same writers used a rounder humanist hand for Latin, for the names of foreign correspondents and often for their own signature, so two scripts frequently share one line.
The letters that trip a reader are the ones drawn with the same stroke. Open e and c are separated only by the size of the loop; r and v both end in a short upstroke; long ſ has no crossbar at all, or a stub on the left, where f carries a full one; the pair ij is written as two undotted minims and shades into y. Word endings are contracted rather than abbreviated: voorsz. and voorn. for the aforesaid, comp.te for comparerende, a swung line over a vowel for a missing n. Amounts are given in guilders, stuivers and penningen, with the guilder mark ƒ, fractions written as superscripts, and a ditto or a pair of commas repeating whatever stood on the line above.
Layout is part of the record. A notarial minute puts the names of the parties and the nature of the act in the left margin and the body to the right, with the notary’s own deletions running through whole clauses. A merchant’s ledger sets the date in one column, the entry in the middle and the sum at the right, ruled and totalled. Printed forms — a receipt, a share certificate, a bill of exchange — leave gaps that a clerk fills in a different, freer hand, and the back of such a form can carry decades of later endorsements in a dozen hands. Letters are written on a folded sheet with a wide margin, signed with a paraph, and addressed on the outside.
Why ordinary OCR struggles here
Letters drawn with the same stroke
A model trained on print has no way of separating e from c, r from v, or long ſ from f in a hand where each is a single quick movement, and no way of deciding between ij and y. The distinctions are learned from the words a Dutch clerk actually writes, not from the shapes on the page.
Two scripts sharing a line
A notary writes his Dutch in Gothic cursive and the name of an Italian merchant, a ship or a Latin formula in a round humanist hand, sometimes mid-sentence. A transcript that does not mark the switch loses a signal that tells you what the writer considered foreign.
Money, fractions and ditto marks
A column of guilders, stuivers and penningen only means something if each figure stays with its entry and the ditto marks are resolved to what they repeat. Generic OCR reflows columns into prose, silently drops the ƒ and turns a superscript fraction into a stray digit.
Additions made years apart
The back of a share certificate or the margin of a protocol accumulates entries written over forty years by different clerks with different inks. They belong to the document but not to its text, and a useful transcript keeps them as a dated series rather than folding them into the original act.
Who works with this material
Genealogists in the notarial archives
Dutch notarial protocols name servants, sailors, widows and creditors who appear nowhere else. What a researcher needs from a transcript is the names, dates, places and sums exactly as written, with a note where a surname could be read two ways, so that the entry can be matched against baptisms and burials.
Economic and maritime historians
Freight contracts, bottomry bonds, share registers and dividend endorsements only become data once the figures are attached to the right dates and parties. A transcript that preserves the columns can be turned into a table without a second pass over the manuscript.
Art historians and provenance researchers
Estate inventories and painters’ contracts are the backbone of provenance work. The description of a picture, the room it hung in and the valuation beside it have to survive together, and the notary’s deletions often show a valuation being revised.
Archives running mass transcription programmes
City archives are digitising notarial series by the metre and asking volunteers to index them. A first machine pass that flags its own uncertain readings turns the volunteers’ work from typing into checking, which is where their expertise actually pays.
Getting the best transcription
Feed it the boilerplate
Tell the model which formula the document follows — a notarial compareerde, a bill of exchange, a company charter, a merchant’s covering letter. Once the recurring clauses are expected, the remaining ambiguity concentrates in the names and figures, which is where a human should be looking anyway.
Say what to do with the second script
Ask for words written in the rounder Latin hand to be marked. Foreign personal names, ship names, Latin tags and often the signature are written that way, and having them flagged saves a separate pass when you build an index of people and vessels.
Keep tables as tables
For ledgers and endorsements, ask for one row per entry with date, description and amount in separate fields, and state whether ditto marks should be expanded to the value they repeat or left as they stand. Guilders, stuivers and penningen should be kept as three fields rather than converted.
Try a page that argues with itself
Run a notarial minute with deletions and a marginal heading before a fair copy. If the struck-out clause comes back labelled as deleted and the margin stays out of the body, the clean pages of the protocol will need little correction.
Further reading on this hand
The palaeography guides the in-app selector points to for this domain, if you want to check a transcription against the standard references.
- Wat staat daer? Uitleg
This Dutch archival project supplies practical rules for reading and transcribing historical manuscripts. Its guidance discusses punctuation, abbreviations, line-end division, and the special relationship between handwritten y and ij. Exercises from Dutch archival collections demonstrate the variability of early modern cursive and recurring administrative or commercial vocabulary. The resource is particularly useful for seventeenth-century records where fast connected writing coexists with structured financial information.
Frequently asked questions
- How does it decide between ij and y?
- From the word, and from the writer’s own habit across the document, since a single clerk is usually consistent even when his neighbours are not. Where the form is genuinely ambiguous the transcript can flag it, which matters for surnames such as Rijk and Ryck that a search will not match to each other.
- Can it keep guilders, stuivers and penningen apart?
- Yes. A sum written ƒ 33-15-0 is returned with its three parts intact rather than as a decimal number, and fractions written as superscripts are preserved. Conversion to a single figure is a separate step you can ask for once the reading is checked.
- What about the ditto marks in a column of endorsements?
- They can be expanded to whatever they repeat, or kept as marks with a note of the value they stand for. For a run of dividend entries the second is usually safer, because the reader can then see how much of the column was actually written out.
- Are additions made decades later kept separate from the original act?
- They are returned as their own block, in order, with the position on the sheet recorded. On a share certificate this keeps the 1606 subscription apart from the payments entered against it down to 1650, which were written by half a dozen different bookkeepers.
- Does it know the notarial abbreviations?
- The common ones — voorsz., voorn., comp.te, ondergeschreven, t’ selve — are recognised and can be expanded in brackets or left as written. Unusual contractions are transcribed as they appear and flagged rather than guessed at, so nothing is silently invented in a legal text.
Related scripts and pages
Transcribe your seventeenth-century Dutch documents
Upload a notarial act, a ledger opening or a letter and see the Dutch Republic’s secretary hand come back as checkable text.