Intro

My name is William Mortensen Vaughan. This is my homepage, to be used by people inclined to research me, and "hear my side of the story."

This is also a place "to hear my side of the story" regarding my paternal "Vaughan" or "Vaughn" lineage.

As a young man, I believed that I was descended from a man named "Luther Clay Vaughan," who had immigrated to the U.S.A. on a ship from Wales. I believed that he had a son named "William Swift Vaughan," who had a son named "William Knowlton Vaughan," who was my father. I understood that the middle names of me, my father, and his father, were, according to a family tradition, the maiden names of our mothers.

Circa 2000, I asked my father's brother, Sidney Knowlton Vaughan, via e-mail, to tell me what he knew of our genealogy. My Uncle Sid, as I knew him, replied with an e-mail, containing notes about our paternal lineage up to and including a man he identified as Luther Clay Vaughan's father, John Vaughan, which came as a surprise to me, since I didn't think anyone knew who Luther's father was. I was also surprised to discover that Luther was born in the U.S.A. 

Approximately eighteen months before I retired from the U.S. Army, I became more interested in my genealogy, and ordered a Y-DNA 12 test from FamilyTreeDNA. I chose to have FamilyTreeDNA test my Y-DNA, because of a recommendation I found at Vaughan-Vaughn.org. I shared my Y-DNA test results and my uncle's genealogical notes with them. My FamilyTreeDNA Kit Number is 157904. To see how my Y-DNA test results compare to others, visit Vaughan-Vaughn DNA Testing Results. For more information about the Vaughan Y-DNA Testing Project, visit the link in this sentence. 

Based on this test, I discovered a match whom I believe to be a direct descendant of Luther Clay Vaughan, via one of William Swift Vaughan's brothers, Rutherford Birchard Vaughan.

As the year 2020 approached, after I had worked five years, with my wife, Libertad Green, in Hollywood, California, and we had settled in her home State of Virginia, I became even more interested in my genealogy, so I started researching it more avidly - primarily, on FamilySearch and Wikitree. In 2020, I upgraded my Y-DNA 12 test to Y-DNA 37. I also had FamilyTreeDNA conduct their mt-Full and Family Finder tests on my mitochondrial and autosomal DNA. In 2021, I upgraded my Y-DNA test to their Big Y-700 test. Furthermore, I had AncestryDNA test my autosomal DNA, as well as that of my wife and her parents.

Perhaps the most significant discovery I made, upon analyzing the results of these tests, was that my paternal, Vaughan lineage probably goes "upstream" only five generations, ending with my great-great-great-grandfather, Joseph Vaughn., whose wife, Eleanor O'Bannon, was U.S. Marine Corps Lieutenant Presley Neville O'Bannon's first cousin. Lt. O'Bannon's expedition, "to the shores of Tripoli," is commemorated in the "Marine Corps Hymn."

Based on my Big Y-700 and autosomal test results, in combination with genealogical and historical records, I believe that Joseph's father was an O'Bannon - a member of Eleanor's family - perhaps her father, or one of her brothers or uncles. Therefore, I do not believe that any Vaughans born before Joseph, circa 1800, are of my paternal lineage.

For more information about my genealogical discoveries, visit my blog titled The Genealogy of William Mortensen Vaughan.