Glad I could help a little. I've transcribed hundreds of Civil War records, and I've gotten fairly proficient at deciphering 19th century cursive, but every once in awhile I run across one that defies translation. In those cases, I try to find a similar mystery letter in a word somewhere else in the document. That usually works. The worst situation though is a document that is torn or badly stained -- all you can do in that case is write [illegible] in your transcription.