GASCONADE COUNTY, MISSOURI

VAUGHAN FAMILY

Summary William Vaughan and Family Move From Washington County, KY to Gasconade County, MO

Clues

1. William was not assessed taxes in Washington Co. during the years 1818 - 1824.

2. At the age of 43, William sells all his lands 384 acres on Rolling Fork Creek in 1818 for $1600. This indicates he did not plan to return to Washington Co.

3. The 384 acres of land sold was adjacent to James Bradford’s farm. James was the younger brother of Adam Bradford, who went off to Missouri at about the same time William left.

4. Around 1819, Adam Bradford, the influential town founder of Bradfordsville, neighbor and acquaintance of William, moves to Gasconade Co., MO. (Source: Adam Bradford biography by S. Macormic, Ancestry.com)

5. There are no Missouri tax or land records for 1820 that have survived. This could explain why we have no records of William during the missing years.

6. Around 1820, the son and grandsons of William’s Aunt, Nancy Gregory, Abel, sons Thomas Inglefield and Uriah Sandifer Gregory leave Washington Co. to settle along the Mississippi River at Gregory’s Landing, MO.

7. In 1828, after William reappears in Washington Co., he buys the 200-acre farm on Medlock Creek for $1000 from Adam Bradford. Bradford was still living in Gasconade Co. in Missouri. (This purchase implies he did not plan to return to wherever he had been for seven years.)

8. In 1828, the families of William’s son Reuben and eldest daughter Nancy relocate to Gasconade Co.

9. 1830, William dies unexpectedly perhaps from the Cholera pandemic that was occurring in Kentucky in the 1830s leaving no will.

10. In 1831, a majority of William’s family, approximately 20 adults and children, including his widow, move to Gasconade Co. near Merrimac Springs. (The county where Adam Bradford, Reuben and Nancy had previously settled.)

11. Also in 1831, part of the traveling group of Vaughans may have included William’s brother, Chesley, who also was living in Washington Co. He too settled in Gasconade Co., MO with his family. His family included daughter, Susan, who married Kanellum Murphey Sr.’s son, John Murphy.

Conclusion

Based on the clues listed above, my assessment is that William Vaughan probably relocated to Missouri and settled there during the period 1818 to 1824.

It is possible he was on the Adam Bradford steamboat that left Louisville in 1819 and landed at St. Louis. At that point, he could have joined Adam Bradford in settling in the Franklin/Gasconade County areas of central Missouri or he could have gone up river with the Gregory boys to Gregory’s Landing on the Mississippi River.

Wherever his travels led him, by 1825 William had returned to Washington County, planned or unplanned. Since he purchased 200 acres upon his return in 1828, it’s highly unlikely he planned to recruit his relatives for a return trip to where he had come.

The epic move of the family to Missouri after Williams’s death may have been motivated by both the Cholera pandemic and the liquidation of his farmland and Medlock Creek homestead.

Contributed by Denny Vaughn

Compiled By: David H. Robertson, 159 Hickory St., Roswell, GA 30075 davidhr@hushmail.com