A reminder from a while back…
Always consider how a place name may be said and heard. Every document on William Lake, his siblings, and his parents, indicated that they lived in Mercer County, Kentucky. Except this one page from his compiled military service record. It indicated he was born in Marshall County, Kentucky.
After saying “Mercer” over and over, I realized that to someone unfamiliar with Kentucky geography it could be interpreted as “Marshall.”
Sometimes inconsistencies are not as inconsistent as one thinks. Before you give too much credence to a “new” location, make certain it is really new.
One response
I have a great uncle named Wilmer Tucker. He was born in Alabama and raised in Florida. On one of the census records, he’s listed as a daughter, which confused me till I realized that in my great grandmother’s Southern accent, it would have sounded like “Wilma” and if he wasn’t home at the time, the census taker would have made an assumption.