Full Disclosure

Full Disclosure

 #52 ancestors Week 6 (Feb 4-10) — Surprise
By Myra Vanderpool Gormley © 2019 

Family history research can be a humbling hobby. Just when you think you have found out everything there is to know about your ancestors, even years later something new can pop up. 

In my early childhood, I was lucky to have spent several years with my maternal grandparents and I had heard their stories many times. Grandmother was a delightful storyteller and I was a captive audience. She told me how she met grandpa at a local dance where he was the caller and her brother played the fiddle. She wanted to wait until she was 21 before she married, but when she was 20, Grandpa convinced her to marry him. They were married 15 October in 1899. Originally, Grandpa had wanted them to marry on his birthday, which was 15 September, but grandmother insisted on the October date. 

Fifty years later, preparations were underway for their Golden Anniversary celebration. It was a gala time as their seven children pooled their money and had their farmhouse painted and papered inside, purchased new curtains, put in new flooring, and spruced up the place in general. The children and their spouses, plus many kinfolks came for the party. Food was piled high on the kitchen table and every counter surface available. 

My cousins and I played and ate goodies until we almost burst. There was lots of singing and storytelling. I remember the laughter as my aunts and uncles told tales about growing up together. The older folks — kinfolks of my grandparents — added their collective memories to the good old days in Indian Territory when they had first arrived. I was nine years old and have a vivid memory of that bright October day and the celebration. 

 When I began genealogical quest, one of the first things I did was go to the courthouse in my hometown and look up the marriage records of both sets of grandparents. I dutifully copied the information and where I had found it (I had good teachers). 

Thus, I had the facts from an original source, I had the memories of the 50th anniversary celebration, and I even recalled what my grandmother told me that she had worn on her wedding day — a navy blue suit that was far too warm for an Indian Summer day in Creek Nation of Indian Territory. 

Imagine my surprise, while in search of another relative, I stumbled across a “Marriage” notice in the local newspaper about my maternal grandparents. While I had the wedding date and place, it revealed two additional bits of information. They were married at the home of the bridegroom in Muskogee, and the ceremony had been officiated by the Rev. S. G. Thompson. 

There they were: Answers to two questions I had never thought to ask.