About

Introduction to My Family Narratives

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. . .Enquire I pray thee, of  the former age, and prepare thyself  to the search of thy fathers; for we are but of yesterday, and  know nothing, because our days upon earth are a shadow. . .

Job, IX: 8 & 9. KJV

In my search for ancestors I have been aggravated by finding that--this record exists here and that record exists there, and that there exists family talk linking the two, but, no paper trail between them can be found.  Recent news that in Texas old boxed up paper files are turning to dust means that more written family history could be disappearing.  Add these to files that have gone up before in the fire and smoke of homes, churches, courthouses, and government buildings. Most of my family trees have suffered from such losses.

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The Vaughans suffered the least.  Thanks to my great-great-great grandmother, Nancy Callicott Vaughan, one of the branches of my family tree left a fine paper trail to accommodate my talkative kin and my need to write down everything I hear.  Sometimes I see a story emerge from what I’ve heard and what has been written, and most of the time the spoken word and the written word actually match up and form a fact about the Vaughans.  Then, the loose ends, when played with, and trailed through American history, can turn into quite a yarn.  Being in love with the English language, I spin words into my stories for fun.  Loving history, I write to record what facts are still readable, combine them with stories Vaughan chroniclers have told, and in effect, use facts for fun and family.  Along the way a photo or relic or letter has turned up here and there to help sort out the fibs from the facts.  The final result is--my folks get to take up a page in the annals of their nation’s history, which, though un-named, they helped to make.  Sometimes, as in the case of James L. Vaughan, they should have been named . . . .

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The whatifs, the wudduh-cudduh-shudduhs, and the maybes expressed in my stories are products of a blend of curiosity and imagination and are intended to provide interest and provoke my parents’ descendants, and others, to keep digging before all they have to dig through is ashes and dust.  The views expressed and the questions I raise are my own.  This website is intended to provide a repository of family stories to preserve my old-fashioned, often flowery, ramblings in case I am on to something.  Being deeply motivated by belief in a spiritual world—motivation that might be viewed in some circles as insanity—I always feel one ancestor or another may be reading over my shoulder, saying, “It’s about time.” 

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​Helen Vaughan Michael

9/20/2013

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