Hello George, The mistake in my opinion was made by fold3 as there were two soldiers named John Black in Company H 17th Regiment, Alabama Infantry. The first one was John W. Black, the son and the second was John Black the father. What I am saying is that at least two of John Black's cards are listed in John W. Black's service records. General Ainsworth and Staff did not make the mistake rather fold3 did. Discharge papers generally contain a lot of information about the soldier including age as an example. When fold3 put John Black's two cards in with John W. Black it made John W. Black look as though he was 46 years old. He was not. At the bottom of page 14 it clearly listed his age as 21 which dovetails with census records. His father however according to the census was born in 1816 and would have been about 46 years old when he was discharged in May of 1862.

It is likely that someone years before had put a couple of the cards into the wrong folder or jacket at the National Archives. I saw fold3 at work a number of years ago and they just took the cards out of the jacket and started taking photographs and such a mistake is easy to understand. I've just never saw a father and son cross over before and thought it interesting.