Yesterday I attended the North Star conference sponsored by the Minnesota Genealogical Society (MGS). One of the sessions was a presentation by Joel A. Watne entitled "IT AIN'T NECESSARILY SO: Adventures in Assessing Some Common Written Sources" with the subtitle "Everybody Makes MISTEAKS." His handout explained: No source, oral or written, is infallible...Accordingly, as genealogists/family historians, it is important to remember that the written documentation we find may not be factually correct, and that we are not recording "facts", but "evidence" of the facts sought to be established. Joel's presentation included many examples of illegible, conflicting, missing, or incorrect records from the Minnesota Historical Society(MHS) indexes of birth and death, the Minnesota Official Marriage System (MOMS), Ancestry.com and newspapers. His presentation was both entertaining and surprising. Joel works with MHS officials to make corrections to the online indexes of birth and death records, i.e., the original record was incorrectly transcribed. I had never taken notice of the website explanation about reporting MN birth record transcription errors: This index currently covers 1900-1934, supplemented by about 2700 pre-1900 records. The index was created by volunteers and should accurately represent the content of each record, including misspellings. If you find a transcription error (as opposed to an error on the certificate itself), please send the certificate number and description of the error to birthrecords@mnhs.org so the index can be corrected. And here's the explanation about submitting MN death record transcription errors: This index covers death cards from 1904 to 1907 and death certificates from 1908 to 2001. The index should accurately represent the content of each record, including misspellings. If you find a transcription error (as opposed to an error on the certificate itself), please send the certificate number and description of the error to deathrecords@mnhs.org so the index can be corrected. It was good to be reminded that the indexes are not always correct/complete, and I was especially grateful to hear that corrections are being made on an ongoing basis.  Of course, any record we find (birth/death/marriage/newspaper) may not be correct/complete.  Remember, "it ain't necessarily so."