How to Transcribe a Handwritten Deed From a Deed Book

To transcribe a handwritten deed from an old deed book, image the full page with its margins, mark off the deed's parts, and type each part as written. Break the land description into one line per call, check the numbers by arithmetic, copy every marginal note, and head the result as a working transcript of a cited book and page.

How do you transcribe a handwritten deed?

You transcribe a handwritten deed in layers. Capture the page, divide it into its parts, type the formula wording, then slow down for the three things that are unique to this deed: the names, the description of the land and the dates. Finish with the margins and a header that cites the volume.

A deed is easier than a letter in one respect and harder in another. Much of its wording is formula, so once you have read "to have and to hold" in one deed you will recognize it in the next. But the words that matter are names and measurements, which no formula predicts.

Read the parties' names, every date, the consideration, and the signatures on the deed before a typed line goes further. A chain of title holds when those items match the book. Say whether you have a warranty deed or a quitclaim deed, and transcribe the habendum clause as written. Copy the recording act particulars from the margin, including a release, into the transcript with the body.

The order of work

1. Image the whole opening. Photograph or scan both facing pages of the book, margins and page numbers included, in color. A deed may start low on one page and run onto the next, and the notes beside it sit at the very edge. The post on scanning handwriting into text covers capture choices for handwritten pages.
2. Record the citation before anything else. Office, county or district, book or volume, page, and the instrument number if the book gives one. Type it into the transcript header now, while the spine and page number are in front of you.
3. Bracket the parts. On a printout or an annotated copy, draw a line where each part of the deed begins.
4. Type the formula parts. Go line for line with the page, keeping the clerk's spelling, capitals and abbreviations.
5. Type the description as a list of calls. One call per line, numbered.
6. Test the description. Convert the distances, sketch the calls, and see whether the figure closes.
7. Copy the margins. Every note, in its position, with its own date and signature.
8. Have a second person read names, calls and dates against the image.

Should you start from a recognition draft?

Try it on one deed and judge. The Schema Law site says recognition is strongest on clean print and weaker on handwriting, and that nothing marks a passage as uncertain, so a converted deed-book page is at best a draft to correct. The Free plan takes one document a day of up to three pages, as the pricing page shows, which is enough for one deed. If the draft needs every line fixed, type from the image instead. For the letterforms themselves, the guide on how to read old handwriting covers older scripts.

The parts of an old deed and where each one sits on the page

An old deed runs as one unbroken block of handwriting, but it is built from parts in a familiar order: an opening, the parties, the consideration, the words of grant, the description, the holding clause, covenants, the signing clause, witnesses and an acknowledgment. Finding the seams first makes the block readable.

The labels in this table are how conveyancers commonly name the parts. Your deed may order them differently, merge two or leave one out, and state law defines what any of them does, so use the table to find your place and confirm each part from the wording in front of you.

Three dates, not one

A recorded deed can carry a date of signing, a date of acknowledgment and a date of recording. They sit in different parts and may be months or years apart. Put all three in your header, labeled. A transcript that says only "dated 1851" leaves a reader guessing which event that was.

Where the seams hide

In a book with no paragraph breaks, the clerk may have marked a new part with nothing more than a larger first letter or a dash. Scan the block for the formula words in the table and pencil a bracket at each. Reservations and exceptions, such as a retained right of way or a burial plot, can sit at the end of the description or inside the covenants, and they begin with small words: "excepting", "reserving", "subject to". Search the whole text for those three before you call the transcript done.

Clerk's copy or original: whose handwriting is in the deed book?

A deed book is the recording office's record of deeds presented to it, so the handwriting on the page may be a copyist's and not the grantor's. Test that on your own volume: compare the hand across neighboring deeds, look at how the signatures are written, and ask the recording office how the book was made.

The question matters because it changes what the page can tell you. A copy shows what a clerk read in a document that was handed in for recording. It may not show how the grantor formed a signature, and it adds one more reader, with one more chance of error, between you and the original.

What to look for on the page

• One hand across many deeds. Turn ten pages each way. If unrelated deeds between unrelated parties are all in the same writing, you are reading a copyist.
• Signatures in the same hand as the body. A grantor's name written in the clerk's script, followed by a drawn or written "(seal)" or "L.S.", is a copy of a signature.
• Marks. "His X mark" written out in the clerk's hand, with the name around it, reports a mark on the original.
• Copying slips. A word repeated at a line end, a line struck and rewritten, or a caret adding a skipped phrase are the copyist's corrections. Transcribe them as you see them.
• A comparison note. Words such as "Examined" or "Compared" near the recording note, with initials, suggest someone checked the copy against what was presented.

What to do about it

Say in the transcript header what you transcribed: "From the recorded copy at Deed Book 14, page 233." If you describe a signature, describe it as it appears in the book: "signature copied by clerk". Do not write "signed by" in your own notes as if you had seen the grantor's pen.

Where a reading in the recorded copy looks wrong, such as a distance that will not close or a name spelled two ways, do not correct it. The recorded copy says what it says. Note the problem, and look for a second witness to the text: the original deed in family or archive papers, a later deed that repeats the description, or a re-recorded copy. Any of those gets its own transcript and its own citation.

How a given office compiled its books in a given decade is a question of local history. The recorder's staff or the state archive that holds the volume can tell you what you are looking at, and their answer belongs in your file notes.

Metes and bounds calls in handwriting: bearings, chains and poles

A metes and bounds description walks the boundary as a series of calls. Each call gives a direction, a distance and the point or neighbor it reaches. Transcribe one call per line, keep the units as written, and check your reading by converting the distances and seeing whether the figure returns to its start.

What a call looks like

A handwritten call might read: "thence N 42° E 36 poles to a stake in Harlan's line". It has three pieces.

• Bearing. A compass direction written as a starting letter (N or S), an angle, and an ending letter (E or W). The degree sign may be a small raised circle, a dash or nothing.
• Distance. A number and a unit. Poles, perches, rods, chains and links may all appear, sometimes abbreviated to one or two letters.
• Monument or adjoiner. A tree, a stone, a stake, a creek, a road, or the line of a named neighbor.

The units

The National Institute of Standards and Technology publishes the relationships among these surveyor's units in Appendix C of NIST Handbook 44, the general tables of units of measurement:

Those are the standard values. If your deed, a plat or a later survey states a different length for its unit, record what it states and raise it with the surveyor. Obsolete and local measures are covered in the guide to old handwriting, abbreviations and measures.

A table for the calls

The "Feet" column is yours, not the deed's, and its heading says so. Here 36 poles at 16.5 feet is 594 feet, 12 chains 50 links is 12.5 chains at 66 feet, or 825 feet, and 50 poles is also 825 feet. Opposite sides match and the bearings are reverses of each other, so this fictional parcel closes.

Using closure as a proofreading tool

A description that fails to close on your sketch tells you to reread, not to edit. Check these first:

1. The quadrant letters. A hurried N and S, or E and W, flips a line across the page. Compare each letter with the same clerk's capitals in the parties' names.
2. The digits. 1 and 7, 3 and 5, and 4 and 9 in an old hand are the pairs to compare against page numbers and dates written by the same clerk, where the right answer is known. The post on why OCR gets numbers wrong covers the same confusions in converted text.
3. The unit. A single abbreviated letter after the number may be read as "p" for poles or "ch" for chains. Record the strokes you see and both candidate readings.
4. A skipped call. Count the corners named in the description and the lines in your table.

If the description still does not close after a careful second reading, record that fact. The error may be the surveyor's or the copyist's, and it may be exactly what the title question turns on. A stated acreage gives one more check: with square chains at a tenth of an acre each, a rough area from your sketch should land near the deed's figure.

Marginal notes, releases and cross-references beside a recorded deed

The margin of a deed book is part of the record. It may carry the instrument's label, recording details, and later events such as a release or a pointer to another book and page. Copy every marginal entry into the transcript, in its own block, with its date and signer.

A margin can hold several kinds of entry, and they do different work.

Rules for the margin block

• Place margin entries after the body of the transcript under a heading such as "Margin, left, beside lines 4 to 9", so a reader can find them on the image.
• Note a change of hand or ink. A release written decades after the deed will not match the copyist's writing, and that difference is information.
• Follow every cross-reference. A marginal "see" note is an instruction to the reader, and a transcript that copies it without pulling the other page has stopped halfway. Log each reference and whether you retrieved it.
• Photograph the gutter. In a tightly bound volume the inner margin curves into the spine, and a note there can be half hidden. If you cannot open the book far enough, ask the office for help and record [lost in gutter] for whatever stays out of view.

Mortgage and deed-of-trust books deserve particular care, because a satisfaction entered in the margin may be the only record in that volume that the debt was paid. What legal effect a marginal entry has is a question of state law for the lawyer. Your transcript's job is to make sure the lawyer knows the entry exists.

Is a typed transcript of a deed enough for a title opinion?

Whether a typed transcript of a deed is enough for a title opinion depends on your jurisdiction's title standards, the insurer or client relying on the opinion, and the examining lawyer's judgment. Treat the transcript as a reading aid that travels with an image of the recorded page, and let the examiner decide what must be seen.

This post explains how to prepare the document. It does not say what a title examiner must review. That standard varies by state and by the underwriter involved, so check the title standards and underwriting requirements that apply to the opinion you are supporting.

What a transcript can and cannot carry

A transcript carries the words. It does not carry the things an examiner may want to judge directly: whether the recording note is complete, whether a marginal release is signed, whether a figure was written over. The same limit applies to any typed copy of a handwritten instrument, and the section on why a transcription should never replace the original sets out the reasoning for wills.

A header that keeps the transcript honest

WORKING TRANSCRIPT OF RECORDED COPY. NOT A CERTIFIED COPY.
Office: Register of Deeds, Calder County (fictional)
Deed Book 14, pages 233-234. Image files: db14-p233.jpg, db14-p234.jpg
Parties: Josiah Harlan to Amos Pruitt
Signed 3 May 1851. Acknowledged 10 May 1851. Recorded 2 June 1851.
Transcribed by T.R., 9 Oct. Names, calls and dates read again by M.O.
Open readings: line 17, unit after "36" read as poles [p / ch].
Margin: one entry, cross-reference to Book 22 page 101, retrieved.

Before the transcript leaves your desk

• The image of every transcribed page is attached, margins visible.
• Every bracketed doubt is listed in the header by line.
• The calls table shows the units as written beside any computed feet.
• Each cross-reference is marked retrieved or not retrieved.
• The header says "recorded copy" unless you transcribed an original instrument.

If the examiner needs proof of what the record says, ask the recording office whether it issues certified copies and how to order one. Typed closing documents in the same chain, such as modern deeds, settlement statements and title commitments, convert far more easily, and the guide to OCR for real estate closing documents covers them. For those typed pages, Word, searchable PDF and plain text are among the export formats on the homepage.