Family Traditions and the genealogist

When I first started my research my husbands grandmother insisted that her father was a merchant from Ireland living in Oklahoma in the early 1900's. He had died shortly before she was born and so she never met him. Apparently her mother traveled back to Texas to see family in 1907 and he died in Oklahomas during her visit. The wife and the mother never got along very well so my grandmothers mother never went back to Oklahoma. He had a step brother living somewhere in Oklahoma in a rest home and his grave was somewhere on the road to Fort Smith Arkansas in a small town called Pittsburg Oklahoma. From grandma Burrow's story a tradition was born. Like all traditions there is always a bit or maybe a lot of truth. It is up to the researcher to prove and disprove the story and glean the facts from among the fiction. Turning over every stone and learning from each clue given.

Facts: According to the 1900 census Grandma's father did live in Oklahoma in the early 1900's. He is buried in a small cemetery near the highway between Texas and Fort Smith Arkansas. The city however was Wilberton and the county Latimer. He was born in Louisiana and adopted as an infant by the Aimes famil,Possible relatives of his own parents. When he was seven or eight his adopted father walked out with an other woman and left he and his mother alone on the Indian Reservation in the Choctaw nation. She remarried a pig farmer and after his death her grandfather changed his name from Ainsworth to Hollenbeck.

Did the traditions match the facts? No but the clues were there and by listening and then searching the clues the facts became apparant. So often the genealogist gets caught up in the traditions and forgets that they may not be the whole story. Or even sadder they may get caught up in the facts and not look for the stories that made their ancestors real people. Both are important and alone neither tell a complete story. Combining the facts with the traditions lead to a good history of your family.