Trying Out Ancestry.com's New Document Transcription Tool

 Ancestry.com announced that they have a new Document Transcription Tool in beta development in Ancestry Launches Document Transcription Feature on 30 April 2025.  The blog post describes the Ancestry transcription process, which uses artificial intelligence tools:

• Upload a document image to the Gallery of a Person Profile in an Ancestry  Member Tree.
• Fill in the document information panel requesting a category, a date, a location, and a description.
• Click on the Transcribe button on the left-hand panel side of the document and wait for the transcript to appear in the right-hand panel.

The transcription feature in the Ancestry blog post focuses on handwritten letters or documents, and does not mention other types of handwritten documents like wills, deeds, birth, marriage and death certificates, etc.  

1)  What should I test it on?  I know from the samples shown on the Ancestry blog post that it can read handwritten letters in English and Spanish.  What about the handwritten land and probate records in English from colonial times?  I have lots of them!

 I have been testing this tool for one week on deeds, wills, and vital records, with mixed results.  As my readers know, I have a wealth of probate and land records from early colonial times to the present time in my computer files obtained and downloaded from Ancestry, FamilySearch, American Ancestors, and from FamilySearch microfilm (and recently using the FamilySearch Full-Text Search transcription feature).  Many of them are transcribed for my own use and published in my weekly Amanuensis Monday series on Genea-Musings. 

2)  My first attempt was with a handwritten land record of Michael Metcalf that I transcribed (with AI-assistance from Full-Text Search) in Amanuensis Monday -- 1761 Deed of Michael Metcalf to William Woods for Land in Cheshire County, New Hampshire Colony (dated 14 April 2025).  I cropped the two-page deed image to the one page with the deed of interest and saved it to a JPG file to upload to the Gallery for Michael Metcalf (1706-1771).

3)  Here is the Gallery page for Michael Metcalf (1706-1771) in my Ancestry Member Tree:

To make the document transcription work, I have to click on the document image, and that opens the document description in the right-hand panel of the screen:

I have filled out the "Edit details" panel and then Saved it.  I have to go back to the Gallery and click on the image and that shows:

The "Transcribe" button is in the upper left area of the left-hand panel.

I clicked on the "Transcribe" button and saw, after about one minute:

The right-hand panel says "There was a network error or the transcription service is down.  Please try again later."

I have tried the same task for the last six days with the same result.  I doubt that there was a network error all six days.  So it must be a transcription problem.  Is the deed too difficult to read?  Perhaps - FamilySearch struggled with it.  

4)  For my 2nd attempt, I tried the 1728 marriage record of Michael Metcalf and Melatiah Hamant in the Medway, Massachusetts record book, which is also on the Gallery page, and the transcription worked almost perfectly:

That worked almost perfectly...it did both pages shown on the image. However, the transcription cutoff before the end of the right-hand page.  The marriage record for Michael and Melatish (Hamant) Metcalf is the last entry on the right-hand page and was not transcribed.

I did the second transcription above right after the first attempt at the deed.  So there was probably no "Network error" when I  attempted the first transcription.  

I did a two-page (on one image) 1826 will transcription with very clear and neat handwriting for another person profile after these first two attempts, and it worked, but also cutoff the last portion of the will text.

5)  My tentative conclusion is that the Ancestry document transcription tool works for some (many?) documents but perhaps not for difficult to read handwriting.  It may have some sort of character or word limit that results in an incomplete transcription.  

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Disclosure: I pay for an All-Access subscription from Ancestry.com. In past years, Ancestry.com  provided a complimentary All Access subscription, an autosomal DNA test, material considerations for travel expenses to meetings, and hosted events and meals that I attended in Salt Lake City.

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Copyright (c) 2025, Randall J. Seaver

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