I. Introduction
In the last years, there is an increasing interest to digitally preserve and provide access to handwritten historical documents residing in libraries, museums, and archives. Such documents are a unique public asset, forming the collective and evolving memory of our societies. Many of these historical documents have an outstanding cultural value in subjects as diverse as literature, botanic, mathematics, medicine or religion, to name a few. In addition to these masterpieces, there are also large collections containing records of quotidian activities. These historical records contain only limited information when considered individually, but provide an intriguing look into the historic life when considered as a complete collection. Examples of these kind of documents are birth, marriage [1], and death records, military draft records, court records, border crossing records, municipal census records, and property registers.