Biography of Joseph Vaughan - Conway Co, AR

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Submitted by: Cathy Barnes <bbarnes@cswnet.com>
        Date: 21 Jun 1998
Copyright.  All rights reserved.
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SOURCE: Biographical and Historical Memoirs of Western Arkansas.
Goodspeed Publishers, 1891.

page 121

Joseph Vaughan, the subject of these memoirs, and one of the pioneer
farmers of Lick Mountain Township, owes his nativity to Dinwiddie
County, Virginia; born in 1828, and is a son of Hartwell and Nancy
(Tucker) Vaughan, who were also natives of Dinwiddie County, Virginia,
where they lived till about 1845, when they removed to Marshall
County, Mississippi, where Mr. Vaughan died in 1865, Mrs. Vaughan
having died about 1846; both Methodists for many years. Mr. Vaughan
was a cooper and farmer. His father, Absalom Vaughan, spent his entire
life in his native State (Virginia), dying about 1840; wife a few
years later. Mr. Vaughan served all through the Revolutionary war, and
was of Irish ancestry. Joseph Vaughan is the eldest of six children;
was reared on a farm with a common school education; went with his
parents to Mississippi, and when 19, went to Drew County, Arkansas,
where he was married soon after to Emiline Shewmake, a daughter of
Andrew and Elizabeth Shewmake.  Mr. Shewmake was born in Hickman
County, Tenn., about 1811, married in Perry County, Tenn., and in 1838
came to Conway County, but afterward lived in Mississippi, and in Drew
and Izard Counties, Arkansas, and died in Faulkner County about 1826.
Mrs. Shewmake died in Izard County about 1854. Mrs. Vaughan was born
in Tennessee and died in Conway County in 1862. In 1865 Mr. Vaughan
married Martha Carpenter, who was born in Upshur County. Texas. (See
sketch of Sterling Carpenter). To this latter union have been born
six children, three sons and two daughters living, viz.: Benjamin,
Rebecca, wife of Joseph Williams, William, Joseph, Charity. Mr.
Vaughan made his home in southeast Arkansas till 1858, when he came to
Conway County and settled where he now resides, then a wilderness, but
he now has 240 acres, of which about 100 acres is under a fine state
of cultivation, all of which is the result of his own management and
hard labor. For ten or twelve years he was blacksmithing, and some
years run a thresher in connection with farming, and he now owns a
good steam gin and corn-mill. He served nearly three years in the
Federal army, enlisting first in June, 1862, in Company B, First
Arkansas Infantry, but was discharged the following winter at St.
Louis, and in 1863 he joined Company H, Eleventh Missouri Cavalry and
operated mostly on the Western frontier against the Indians, till the
cessation of hostilities, and was discharged at New Orleans.
politically, he was formerly a Whig, but since the dissolution of that
party he has affiliated with the Republicans. He is a member of the
Masonic Order at Springfield, and of Napier Post of the G. A. R., at
Centre Ridge. He and wife are members of the Christian Church.