In short, I am researching family heritage on Ancestry dot com, and have arrived at a critical link of a woman born in 1838, died 1912, of whom I have conflicting info (well, wouldn’t be conflicting if these are different people). With regard to two specific accounts, I have the same first name, middle initial, married name, birth year, and living in Pennsylvania, but different cities (but could have moved around), but different birth states, and incomplete / non-overlapping children (but the child in one account died before the publication of the second account). This person lived in Pennsylvania most of her life.
Is it common to find discrepancies in records of this time period such that this could be the same person? It would be a remarkable coincidence otherwise.
Any advice interpreting this situation is very much appreciated! Happy to share more specifics by private message.
You should try on r/Genealogy. This does sound within reason for the normal margin of error you might expect in these types of documents, but r/Genealogy is really the place to go for this sort of query.