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Yes, the original story was that Gondolin wasn't founded until after the Nirnaeth by Turgon's regiment fleeing the battle,* all of them of course Gnomes. The new story arose pretty 'late'- IIRC not until the Grey Annals ca. 1951-2 - where Gondolin had been founded long before by Turgon's mixed-race people from Nevrast.
That however runs into the problem of language- why would the people of Nevrast not have followed the rest of Beleriand in speaking Sindarin save the Noldor among themselves? Probably because in the GA as written the old linguistic system was in place, where the language we know as "Sindarin" was still "Noldorin." (It's really sort of a wonder to me that Tolkien covered his tracks in the Lord of the Rings so well that nobody even suspected that a Great Linguistic Shift had occurred between its writing and its publication)
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*So where did the women and kids come from?
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The entire plot of The Lord of the Rings could be said to turn on what Sauron didn’t know, and when he didn’t know it.
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