As 2008 begins, it always seems appropriate to look forward to the upcoming year and figure out what goals to pursue.  Our Vaughan Pioneer group has steadily grown over the past 9 years and have launched many projects.  Our goals for the upcoming year have yet to be determined as a group, but personally, I’d like to see our group continue in it’s sponsoring of DNA testing.  We are still trying to locate a descendant of one of James and Martha Vaughan’s sons to compare their Y-DNA to the descendants of Ben Vaughan that we have already tested.

We may need to concentrate on looking at seemingly unrelated Vaughans in hopes of possibly determining a connection to William and John Vaughan.  As always, I’m trying to enter into my Vaughan database as many descendants of William and John that I can find.  Our group’s letter writing project had some results, but there are, I feel, many more descendants of William and John that have not been contacted.  I’ve mentioned to our group the idea of trying to contact some of the many descendants of Thomas and Nancy (Ford) Vaughan.  This oldest son of William and Fereby often is forgotten as research has focused mainly on the Arkansas branch of their family.  Many of Thomas’ descendants moved to Oregon in the 1800s.  I wonder how many family stories may still be unrecorded from this branch of the family.

My hope is that as DNA testing becomes more and more a part of Genealogical research, more Vaughans will have their DNA tested to help further the database of DNA that cane be used to determine ancestry.  I also hope that a close look at the DNA of Bill Willard, who’s Y-DNA matches descendants of Ben Vaughan very closely, will maybe help us solve the mystery of Ben’s Y-DNA mismatch to William and John’s Y-DNA.

As always, if you are reading this posting and are a descendant of William and Fereby Vaughan and/or John and Nancy Vaughan, contact me and I’d be glad to share information.

Eddie Davis