Years ago, I used the declarations of intention from Hamilton County, Ohio. The courthouse has had several fires. When I saw the declaration of intention for my ancestor it looked a little unusual. When I saw the declaration after his I realized the the signatures were in the same handwriting as the document and were the same handwriting from one document to another. Turned out (when I read the prefatory material on the microfilm) that the declarations of intent I was using were transcriptions made from the damaged original after one of the fires.
An ancestral sister had a baby a few years before her marriage to her husband in the 1860s. Court records from the estate of the baby’s grandfather (the father of the sisters) make it clear that he and his wife raised the baby. The child grew to adulthood and have children of her own. One researcher decided to change the child’s date of birth, the couple’s date of marriage, and the baby’s last name in order to make it appear to be the husband’s child. Report what you find, but don’t change what you locate in order to present a different story from the reality.
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