The Ruark surname is regarded by some, unfortunately, as a simple misspelling of the name "Roark". While this may occasionally be true, my own research has shown that the vast majority of Ruark families use this name consistently, and it has remained "Ruark" down through the centuries. The few times I've seen other spellings are Rewark, and Rheuark, is an independant surname in itself.

Why have I set up this site? I originally put some of my genealogy information on the web on my Compuserve homepage. While many surnames were represented there, I was surprised by the number of questions I received about the Ruark family, a surname I had thought to be pretty rare. Occasionally I was able to help the questioner, and found that we were related, but more often I just didn't recognize their family. The first names were occasionally similar to those used in my own Ruark clan, but I was often unable to find a match. I had so many people write, that I was grandually able to build up a large amount of information about other Ruark families. Instead of having people ask me, I thought I'd make it easier and put the information on the web. As far as I know, there is no other website dedicated to the history of the Ruark family, so hopefully I'll be able to make a contribution to your research.

I've tried to make the pages contained on this site fairly easy to navigate. Of course, you can just use the Back/Forward buttons on your browser for one-page-at-a-time viewing. From the bottom of any page, you can also click the "Ruark Family Genealogy Homepage" link to return to the homepage for the site.