This website contains the ancestors of my daughter, Alexandra Catlin Vaut, and related families.  It represents nearly 60 years of research, but still contains errors, omissions and unsupported information. My principal purpose in posting this family tree is to provide some research guidance to others with an interest in some of the people I have identified. As the product of many decades of collecting information, my research reflects considerable change (improvement) over time to better document facts and assumptions and to cite reputable sources. In more recent work, I have been particularly diligent. In my older research I often did a very poor job of documentation and sometimes accepted bad information without any substantiation. I now try to consistently note where I have made speculative assumptions about various relationships and facts, but I know that I have still not been entirely consistent in this, so don't trust unsubstantiated information. I continue working on this genealogy and make regular changes to the data and additions to the tree. 

May 15, 2025: I think that I have pushed my wife's EVANS line back as far as I can for now. The earliest ancestor I have identified may be John (I) EVANS (c1635-bef 17 Mr 1695). First of all, I would like to note three imporant sources that helped me in unraveling the dozens of interfamily marriages among the lines I have been working on from Somerset Co., MD and Accomack Co., VA (CROCKETT, EVANS, EWELL, and PARKS, for the most part):

The three sites do not always agree with each other, but, between them, they sometimes offer good evidence as to the correct path. I am slowly researcing other sources now (e.g., Ancestry databases) to build the base of evidence.

However, I am still left with a conundrum to unravel. Prior to thie latest round of research that was stimulated by some DNA matches on Ancestry DNA ThruLines (more on this later), our earliest identified PARKS ancestor was my wife's maternal great great grandfather, Alexander R. PARKS (1824-1893) of Kent Co. MD. I have now found a suitable connection which I believe might be his father. There was a Reuben PARKS (1780-bef1840) who was in Somerset Co., MD and whose ancestry I have been able to trace back several more generations. I have a theory that he was the father of our Alexander R. PARKS (whose middle name might have been "Reuben"), but his is still to be proved. Some Ancestry family trees claim this lnik, but I have not found any conclusive proof that this Reuben was our Alexander R.'s father.

This is where the Acncestry DNA test opened new doors, but also where, after much building of trees, I now realize that the DNA matches DO NOT prove any one line with the families. This is because these families intemarried so many time in 4 or 5 generations that a DNA match with someone canoot be taken as conclusive proof that just one of the lines is correct. So, when Ancestry shows a match of individual A to individual B, it only means that A is related to some ancestor in B's past, not to a specific ancestor.

May 13, 2025: I continue to work on my wife's PARKS line and the related families (CROCKETT, EVANS, and EWELL, along with many others). In the17th, 18th and early 19th centuries, these families were mosly on Smith Island (Somerset Co., MD) and Tangier Island (Accomack Co., VA). They seemed to seldom stary from there for 150 years.

There were many, many cases of intermarriage among the familes: 1st and 2nd cousins marrying in nearly every generation. They tended give each generation the same given names, making sorting identies quite difficult. There are many confusions in identiying the wives: varous sources reporting different wives (or muiltiple wife); perhaps due to the confusion of given names, perhaps given a lack of diligence in analyzing the available informtion. I am making errors and trying to be diligent, myself, in correcting them when I become aware of them. Please forgive my errors and feel free to call my attention to them.

May 8, 2025: All missing files have been repaired or replaced. I continue my work on the CROCKETT, EVANS, EWELL, and PARKS families of Accomack Co., VA and Somerset Co., MD.

If you see anything wrong or questionable in my data, PLEASE contact me and let me know about it - particularly if you have and are willing to share evidence to supplement, correct, contradict or disprove what I have written here. I am happy to share my work with those who are serious about their own research and am always willing to correct my errors.

Feel free to contact me via email (gregvaut "at" gmail "dot" com) if you have a question or comment regarding this research.

The scond edition (expanded, with major revisions) of my book Such Lives As These is available for download without charge at Academia.edu. (For more information on what the book contains click on Such Lives As These at the top of this page.)

BEWARE

Beware of information that is supported only by references to Ancestry Family Trees and that is not confirmed with other evidence. I sometimes include such information to guide my own research, but you shouldn't trust these sources unless you can confirm them and their sources yourself.

Please cite all sources of information, including this website.

Recommended citation:  Vaut, Gregory, Ancestors of Alexandra Catlin Vaut, http://www.acvancestors.com : accessed (insert date), (insert name or item of interest).

[Based on Mills, Elizabeth Shown, Evidence Explained. 3rd edition. Baltimore: Genealogical Publishing Company, 2015, p. 657.]