I want to trace over handwritten text

I have about six pages of handwritten text that have been photocopied umpteen times.  I can type a transcript, but I want to resurrect the hand written form.  The brush tool would be useful if I had just a few words, but I have six pages.  I've tried the various smoothing options and they help a bit, but only a bit.  I've tried the path tools too, but they just seem to increase the dificulty.  Ideally, I'd like to use the brush to mark dots on the text, I'm willing to mark quite a lot of dots, and then ask Photoshop to join them with suitably smooth curves.  Holding the left button down while I drag nearly works, but preserves the errors I make, as well as the correct bits.  I'm guessing that Pshop is the wrong product for this job.  Am I right?  Am I missing something?