Tretower Genealogy Research

Well, after Bill Willard’s 67 marker test came in and then we received Phillip Ray Vaughan’s test, we were delighted to see that both men match 67 out of 67 markers.  Phillip Ray was a descendant of Ben Vaughan who married Cherubia Harp.  Now it is looking like either Ben Vaughan’s father was a Willard, or else his father, James Vaughan, was not the son of John Vaughan but himself a Willard.  We know it could not be James’s father, John, that was the Willard, as John’s other sons’ Y-DNA matches descendants of William Vaughan.  So we have a two generation possibility.  As Bill’s line came from Prince Edward County, Virginia, where James Vaughan’s mother, Nancy Callicott was born and spent much of her childhood, I’m suspecting that it was Nancy who had a relationship with a Willard and produced James.  I’m not sure John Vaughan even know that James was not his son.  Of course they could have adopted an orphan from the area where they lived, who took their name, but I don’t think this was what happened.

First, John and Nancy had only been married a year when James was born.  He was their oldest son, and I don’t think a young, newly married couple without children would adopt a child before they had produced one themselves.  Nancy was only 17 or 18 when James was born, and I really don’t think she was an adopted mother at that age.  Of course to verify or disprove this, we’d need to test the Y-DNA of some of James and Martha’s other son’s descendants.  If all of their sons’ DNA matched Ben’s, then it was James who was probably the Willard child.  If Ben’s was the only one of the sons with different DNA, then it was he who had been adopted or born out of wedlock.

Nancy and John tried in 1792 to marry, but they didn’t go through with it, though they filed the legal paperwork to get a license.  Nancy was only 15 then, and I now wonder if she was pregnant by a Willard boy and John Vaughan had just stepped in to save her, but maybe she changed her mind or her family didn’t disown her as she’d feared.  At either rate, they “ran away” in 1794 to neighboring Halifax county to wed.  Maybe James was not born  in 1795 as the records claim, but 1792 or 93. This is just speculation, of course, but certainly the Willard family of Bill Vaughan matches closely Ben Vaughan’s family.  The mystery continues….

Eddie Davis