phil57, what a disappointment. Hopefully, something in the near future will pop up to give you some answers.
I’m assuming that you’ve tried every conceivable spelling variation for the surname when looking at Ancestry matches? 
I thought that I knew my Vaus variations, using Vaux and Vans - until I stumbled upon Vous, Voice, Nous and one other variation that was so odd that I can’t remember it.
I also suppose that you’ve searched on Ancestry only for the village (not typing any first or surname in the search)?
Hi Lisa, yes to both, and not just on Ancestry. I have a wide and verifiable tree covering three adjacent villages, back to my Gx6 GF who died in 1738. I have the names and other titbits of information about his mother and father-in-law, obtained from deeds held at TNA and Somerset Archives.
I have references to a family of the same name purchasing property and land in the village in 1539 and references to the same family providing horsemen to counter the threat of the Spanish armada. Plus further references to the family holding substantial lands and property in the area and also farming up to 1626. What I don't have is any information to link that family directly to my Gx6 GF, although he was apparently a man of some means, holding lands and property in the local area as well as in London. That all disappeared within a couple of generations when my Gx4 GF appears to have fraudulently withheld the distribution of his father's estate to the beneficiaries, and sold it in parcels to various other parties, which was later subject of a Chancery court case.
I have the name of his uncle, with whom he jointly held some properties, and there are people with the same surname to be found in the Bishops transcripts prior to 1700, but the records are not sufficient in coverage to enable any linking of family members unfortunately.
So I think it fairly likely that Gx6 GF was a descendant of the earlier family, but there is no evidence I can find to tie the two together. 70 plus trees on Ancestry make identical claims about my Gx6 GF's year of birth and family in a town in the same county, but with no sources or actual evidence of any kind. Those tree owners that I have contacted and who have bothered to respond simply say they copied the information from other trees.
All very frustrating. I am intending to visit TNA again later this year to make further searches of the Chancery records, which may or may not be fruitful. But it keeps me out of other mischief ;-)
