Tulare County Biographies

DAVID ANTHONY VAUGHN

Transcribed by: Craig A Hahn

This file is part of the California Genealogy & History Archives
http://www.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~cagha/index.htm

  
     Few men the vicinity of Porterville are in higher repute than David Anthony 
Vaughn, a brief account of whose career to this time is here given. He was born 
at East Greenwich, Kent county, R. I., October 7, 1846, a son of Caleb and Lydia 
(Hathaway) Vaughn, natives of the same town. Caleb Vaughn who was born in 1816 
and now ninety-seven years old, is still living there; his wife died in 1881. 
They had two sons and four daughters: David A., William, Pheby, Susan, Lydia and 
Addie. Pheby, Addie and William are living at East Greenwich. 
 
     In May, 1868, Mr. Vaughn started for California by way of Panama, and 
arrived at San Francisco June 13, following. That same year in San Joaquin 
county, he leased a five hundred and ten-acre ranch and for three years engaged 
in stock-raising and wheat growing. In 1871 he moved to Porterville, Tulare 
county, where for twenty years he gave his attention almost exclusively to sheep 
raising. During that period he purchased about six thousand acres of land from 
individuals and from the Southern Pacific Railroad Company. He has sold three 
hundred and twenty acres of orange land, which is now being improved, and now 
owns fifty-three hundred and sixty acres, sixteen hundred acres of which is 
number one orange land. For the last thirty years he has grown wheat and raised 
cattle. In 1904, upon the organization of the First National Bank of 
Porterville, he was one of its original stockholders and he has since owned a 
considerable interest in the institution. In 1907 he moved his family from his 
ranch to the city of Porterville, where he had bought a family residence at the 
intersection of Morton and D streets. He was elected mayor of Porterville in 
1910 for a two-year term, after which he refused to again become a candidate. 
During his term of office, he made a record as an able, honest and up-to-date 
executive. During all the years of his manhood he has been a Republican and he 
is still proud to support the policies of that party. 
 
     In 1880, at East Greenwich, R. I., Mr. Vaughn married Amanda M. Shippee, a 
daughter of Manser and Harriet Shippee, natives of that town. Mrs. Vaughn was 
educated in the public schools of East Greenwich, and came to California 
immediately after her marriage. L. U. Shippee, her uncle, had come to Stockton 
in 1853. Mrs. Vaughn�s parents are both dead. She has two brothers and two 
sisters living in East Greenwich, R. I. Mr. and Mrs. Vaughn have two daughters, 
Minnie and Bessie. Minnie married J. S. McGahey, of Porterville, in 1903, and 
they have a son named Earl. 
 
SOURCE:  History of Tulare and Kings Counties, California with Biographical 
Sketches - Los Angeles, Calif., Historic Record Company, 1913 Pp 471, 472