The following article was written by Lloyd Bockstruck:
Recently a genealogist shared with me her dilemma about locating documentary evidence of her ancestor’s military service. He was supposedly a veteran of the Mexican War with the surname Osborn, so she examined the index to Mexican War pension files in the National Archives in Washington, D.C. Staff at the archives had indexed the records in a card file, and the index had been microfilmed. Later, no less than three different genealogists transcribed and published the index in book form. At the time of the filming of the index, some cards had been pulled and re-filed in improper sequence. While there were no more than a dozen such examples of this type of error, it is a pitfall of which all genealogical researchers must be aware.
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