52 Ancestors 2026: Week 9 Conflicting Clues

Week 9 of the 52 Ancestors prompts is "Conflicting Clues":  facts (or would be facts) that you've found in the course of your research.  Mine actually started with family stories and went on to actual research:  by the time I'd finished, I had four different conflicting stories!

This is about my paternal grandmother Olive Gertrude (Howdeshell) Prewitt.  My grandmother Prewitt died in 1942, the only thing they all agree on.  Her cause of death however . . .

Beginning with my mother's story:  She had married my father in 1941 and lived in the same city as her in-laws.  Her story was that Ollie was hit by a car and died.  My mother's only comment was "Don't ask your father about it."  

Then Dad, who at one point said that she had died of the flu.  I am not even sure if he was in the same state when his mother died:  he was in the Navy, WWII had started and he was definitely on active duty at that point.   He also was definitely an unreliable narrator so this I assume could have been the result of not wanting to accept whatever had really happened.

The obituary in the local paper stated that she had died "after a long illness."

The death certificate stated that she had died after a cerebrovascular event after three hours, which does not sound like a long illness to me.

Ollie was only 59 when she died. She'd been married, had one daughter, divorced, remarried (my grandfather) had another daughter who died at three years of age while Grandma was pregnant with my father, and had two more sons, eight and ten years after my father's birth.  It could not have been an easy life.  Maybe the truth is that she died of a broken heart.