When local records clerks create and maintain indexes to their records, they sometimes add extra details about the record in the index. It may be an alternate spelling of the name, a married name for a female birth, or additional detail. The clerk really is not supposed to alter anything on the original record, but they may have made a notation with an extra detail in the index.

It does not happen often, but it does happen.

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  1. My favorite was while looking at a 19th century deed ledger in the Greenup Co., Ky courthouse. On the entry for one of my husband’s ancestors, I noticed that the clerk instead of writing in the left margin column the full names of the grantor and the two grantees, the clerk wrote the name of the grantor and then “to sons” There are no other records of this relationship, probate books for the time period missing probably due to Ohio river floods.

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