Team working to digitize records of enslaved people in Kentucky

LEXINGTON, Ky. (WKYT) – For the primary time in Kentucky, a staff is working to digitize historic information of enslaved individuals, courting again to the late 1700s.

The challenge will make it simpler for individuals to entry details about their household historical past.

Downtown Lexington was the positioning of one of many greatest slave markets within the southeastern United States, previously generally known as Cheapside.

“One of many myths was on the market was that there was one central e book that had all of the names of slaves that have been bought at Cheapside and that’s not true,” mentioned Shea Brown, Fayette County Particular Initiatives Deputy Clerk.

In Fayette County, information of enslaved people are captured all through varied report books.

“One of many hardest issues with these information is making an attempt to learn the outdated colonial-style handwriting,” Brown mentioned. “It’s written in a script that’s in a time interval that most individuals aren’t accustomed to.”

With the intention to discover details about their enslaved members of the family, individuals must undergo outdated, giant, hard-to-read books.

“It’s lots to it. It’s a variety of work and the one method you are able to do it’s maintain coming in every day, spend a while within the clerk’s workplace,” Brown mentioned. “So, then we began considering, ‘effectively, what if this data will be made obtainable on-line?’”

That’s why the Digital Entry Challenge is working to make this course of simpler by digitizing 137 report books, greater than 60,000 pages.

“There’s two issues that this challenge will do. It’ll permit individuals to have simpler alternative to see these information, however, the second factor, these books are fading away, so this challenge will maintain data saved into the long run eternally digitally,” Brown mentioned.

A staff is working to scan the books and so they’ll later be posted on-line. After the preliminary challenge launches the objective is to transcribe the information, making it even simpler for individuals to entry the knowledge.

Brown says the objective is to launch the primary a part of the challenge in the summertime of 2023.

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