Documenting the account is not documenting the event

Alma Smith Spearman's family history is a real source, and BEFORE TILL treats it as one. What it documents, precisely, is that an account existed and was written down by a descendant. That is genuinely evidence — of the account.

It is not, by itself, contemporary documentary evidence for events that predate the author's lifetime. So the archive holds the Vicksburg College story, the Bishop Mason story, and the eighty-acre place as Family Tradition: preserved, cited, attributed, and visible, with their status stated plainly rather than quietly upgraded.

The absence of proof is not the same as disproof. Until research establishes otherwise, "Vicksburg College" remains an open question about an institution, not a verdict on a family's memory.