Did They Think We’d Analyze It To Death?

When your ancestor answered questions for that marriage application, birth certificate, census, social security application, etc, remember that they might not have realized that in one or two hundred years a descendant would be analyzing that one response in great detail.

They might never have realized that giving a wrong answer would create so much frustration later on and the records clerk might not have thought that sloppy handwriting decades later would be an issue. All individuals involved might have thought the record would be filed away and never looked at again.