FromThePage is software that allows volunteers to transcribe handwritten documents online. Currently it hosts the Julia Brumfield Diaries, an incomplete collection of diaries written between 1915 and 1938 chronicling life on a tobacco farm in Pittsylvania County, Virginia.
The FromThePage software is still under development, but we'd like to invite people to look around and send suggestions and bug reports to alpha.info@fromthepage.com. If anything looks broken, hard to understand, or just odd, please let us know! For a behind-the-scenes look at the development effort, check out the product development blog.
If you're interested in using FromThePage to host a transcription project, we're looking for you. The software is free to use, but currently requires users to be fairly tech-savvy and patient. Please email alpha.info@fromthepage.com and tell us about your project.
The 1918 diary was originally transcribed and published by Neil Brumfield in 1993. It covers daily farm life, a neighbor's draft to fight the First World War, and the death of Julia's son Charles in the influenza epidemic. Capitalization and punctuation has been modernized throughout, while spelling has been retained
The 1919 and 1921 diaries were transcribed by volunteers using FromThePage. The majority of the transcription was performed by Linda Tucker, while editing and annotation was performed by Ben Brumfield. The subject matter and transcription conventions are similar to those of the 1918 diary.
Read the 1919 diary
Read the 1921 diary
The 1920 diary was discovered and scanned through the efforts of Linda Tucker.
It awaits volunteers to transcribe it. To help, or just
to try out the FromThePage software, you'll need to
create an account.
Then visit the 1920 diary
and click the transcribe tab on any page.