Among the problems one encounters when trawling the Internet for information is just how many tasty snippets slip through the mesh of the net. My strategy when searching, particularly when using a proper noun, is to break the word down into as many permutations as possible. This can improve the quantity of the results because some old documents were acquired by the likes of Google as images.
These can be thought of as similar to the photographs produced by a digital camera. So, if you've ever been in a record office and photographed a baptism record you might have taken it home and then typed out all the information but kept the image as a memento.
The out of copyright documents in Google Books usually have an option to display these kind of images as a text that one can cut and paste into a word processor. If you haven't tried this then follow the link to Monnet's letter to Garrick (14 April 1768) and then click on the "Plain text" option. This is done by a process known as Optical Character Recognition (OCR). If you've gone through the laborious process of typing out the text from your photos you will be pleased to know that there are OCR programmes available on the Internet.
It doesn't take long to discover that even when the original is a clearly printed document the process of converting an image to text makes frequent mistakes. When the original is a handwritten document or a cursive font has been used then there are usually many more mistakes to correct.
Human beings encounter similar problems in information processing. I've been working with original documents since a 1975 school history project on the Battle of Worcester and paleography is often just as baffling as that first adventure. I both expect and enjoy this challenge as some people enjoy crosswords. On first reading the naturalization act of James Hervet d'Egville I wasn't disappointed. I found it equally tantalizing when a dance historian told me that he had almost "fallen off his chair" when he had read the maiden name of James' mother.
At that time I'd very little knowledge of dance in the eighteenth century so I had no idea what he could mean other than it must be something very interesting indeed. So when I tried to make out the grey photocopy of a handwritten original I remained firmly in my seat. The legibility was such that I had to give it a second glance and the name that I read, "Ansaume," meant nothing to me.
Even after a quick Google Anseume or Anseaume meant little more and I had to burrow among the Google Books to get an idea of who he was. Rather than explaining I will leave you to explore this yourself if you are unfamiliar with him. It's enough to say that he was a significant figure in the Opéra Comique and might make a person fall off a chair. But it did not add up; for all sorts of reasons he could not be Sophia d'Aigueville's father.
I returned to the copy of the manuscript and to first principles. I looked for analogues of the letters among known words and eventually deciphered the name as "Anselme." The Anselme family of the Hague were even more difficult to find for the theatrical layperson - but I could easily understand that she too might make a person fall from a chair. For as many reasons as Ansaume was wrong she was definitely right - not least because Sophia Baptiste Anselme's collection of names fits with Jame's mother and there is the Hague connection.
I'm now interested to read a different interpretation of the name, "Auselin," from some of our contributors. I never wed myself to a particular hypothesis to the extent that I can't get a "quickie" divorce and I will certainly be returning to the manuscript. I will be happy to tear up some of my previous work if necessary. It is probably worth noting that Genlias - the Dutch genealogical database - doesn't return any results for Auselin today. I have used this phrase because it has given me differing results on different days. However, records from the Hague are not included.
The OCR process readily interprets "Anselme" as "Auselin" even in text which is obvious to the human brain. The autograph manuscript of M. Monnet's letter to Garrick has now become an object of desire for me but a visit to the Hague is a necessity.
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