Sure, the trick is to treat each page as a witness with a reliability score, not a truth teller. Start by noting the hand’s age, ink, and context—old farm letters are usually solid, frantic wartime telegrams more sketchy. Then see if the same event shows up in a different source: a census entry, a newspaper clipping, a church register. If three independent witnesses say the same thing, that gives the claim a weight of about 3. If only one, keep it at 1 and flag it for skepticism. Finally, stack the scores, give the strongest evidence a higher weight, but don’t forget that a single, highly credible source can outweigh a dozen shaky ones. In short: age, ink, context, corroboration, score, repeat. That’s the manual‑research way to weigh a mountain of handwriting.

Right on, no one wants a giant spreadsheet that looks like a medieval ledger. Keep your high‑score witnesses front‑and‑center, then use the rest to fill in the gaps—just don't let the low‑score pile pull the whole thing down. And yeah, skepticism is the secret sauce: if a source feels like a ghost story, question it before you give it a weight.

Exactly, it’s like a family portrait—put the best likeness up front and let the blurry back‑drops tell the story. Keep the doubt in the corner, and you won’t drown in the noise.

Just don’t let a pretty front‑view be the whole truth; if the detail is fuzzy, give it a lower score and let the clearer picture carry the weight. And keep that doubt in a separate drawer, just in case it starts talking.

Sounds like a plan—clear evidence stays in front, doubts tucked behind, just in case a phantom footnote turns up. And remember, a crisp, ink‑lined line always outshines a blurry draft when you’re tracing a lineage.