The following interesting response was received from ARFHS member Jean Loudin regarding the editorial that appeared in the last issue:

"One thing about traditions. I never throw the baby out with the bathwater as I always find a grain of truth. These are stories handed down for long periods of time and they get mixed up, but they started somewhere about something. Like the stonemason example you gave. The ancestors may have been stonemasons and the story was elaborated. In my husband's line I was told that the Loudins were descendants of Tuckahoe Indians and g-g-g grandma married at age 12, ran off with the gardener on her father's plantation, was disowned, and they moved to West Virginia. After a lot of searching I sorted all of this out and it is true but mixed up. She was a Sudderth although the family thought Sothers. She married the blacksmith on the plantation, but not at age 12 and she was not disowned. Her mother's name was Randolph and "their plantation was named Tuckahoe and the Indian ancestor turned out to be of all people Pocahontas. The 12 year old elopement referred to a sister of John Randolph. I can see how they sat around the "fireside on cold winter nights telling their family stories and how the children started messing them up. I agree that we should not buy into the story completely, but we should not ignore traditions completely, either. I always look at them and take them apart with the question "what if?" You mention published things that are wrong that never go away. There are so many published things that are so wrong."

[Editor's note: Thanks Jean for your well thought out comments. I must agree that often family traditions can contain a grain of truth! I guess it has been my intent to suggest that while we may find some truth at the core of our family traditions we must be careful to search out the family record completely in an effort to sort out the parts of the stories that are true from the additions. All to often people refuse to accept that ANY part of their family tradition is wrong even when evidence to the contrary is presented. And the refusal to accept good evidence just because it does not fit into what we have been told has done a good deal of damage to the record that has been assembled about many of our ancestors. ]