Vaughan, John, 1756-1841

John Vaughan (1756–1841, APS 1784) was a wine merchant, philanthropist, and long-time treasurer and librarian of the American Philosophical Society. A native of England, Vaughan moved to Philadelphia in 1782. He soon was one of the most respected members of Philadelphia society, largely because of his tireless support of numerous literary, scientific and benevolent causes. Over the course of his five decades of service to the American Philosophical Society, Vaughan met and corresponded with many eminent Americans and Europeans.

John Vaughan was born in London, England, in 1756. He was one of eleven children of Samuel Vaughan, a London merchant and West India planter, and Sarah Hallowell, daughter of Benjamin Hallowell, a Boston merchant and founder of Hallowell, Maine. Vaughan grew up in a liberal household. The family attended religious services by the dissenting minister and political radical Richard Price (1723-1791, APS 1785). His older brothers, Benjamin Vaughan (1751-1835, APS 1786), who became a prominent diplomat and political reformer, and William Vaughan, who eventually served as the promoter of the London docks, resided with the dissenter Joseph Priestley (1733-1804, APS 1785) during their studies at the Warrington Academy. John apparently attended Palgrave School, a popular school for boys founded by the poet and essayist Anna Letitia Barbauld (1743-1825) and her husband, the Reverend Rochemont Barbault.

In 1776, in preparation for a mercantile career, John Vaughan was sent abroad, first to Jamaica, where he spent one year, and then to France, where he arrived in 1778. While working for a merchant house in Bordeaux, Vaughan became acquainted with Benjamin Franklin and his grandson William Temple Franklin (1760-1823, APS 1786). After the conclusion of the Treaty of Amity and Commerce between the United States and France, Vaughan, who, as a British subject, was faced with possible arrest or deportation, declared himself an American. However, when he was unable to receive from the American minister a certificate to that effect, he removed to Spain. In 1782 Vaughan came to the United States. He settled in Philadelphia, where he became a prosperous wine merchant.

Vaughan almost immediately dedicated much of his energy and resources to the American Philosophical Society. He became a member in 1784, treasurer in 1791, and librarian in 1803, serving in these posts until his death in 1841. In his five decades of service under the presidencies of David Rittenhouse (1732-1796, APS 1768), Thomas Jefferson, Caspar Wistar (1761-1818, APS 1787), Robert M. Patterson (1787-1854, APS 1809), William Tilghman (1756-1827, APS 1805) and Peter Stephen Du Ponceau (1760-1844, APS 1791), Vaughan kept the society’s books and accounts, oversaw its publications, and carried on its extensive correspondence. He diligently worked to expand the society’s collections through requests for private donations, exchanges of material, and appeals to European and American learned societies to donate their publications. (Vaughan eventually bequeathed his own library of 600 volumes to the society.) In 1824 he compiled a catalog for the library which he hoped would one day become a National Library . He also acquired the catalogs of other libraries so that scholars working in the Philosophical Society would know what was available elsewhere. Vaughan contributed generously to the construction of Philosophical Hall, and in 1795 he made a subscription toward the proposed western expedition of the French botanist André Michaux (1749-1802).

John Vaughan was not a scholar or scientist himself. However, he encouraged and supported the work of scholars, especially those interested in Native American linguistics and ethnohistory, like his friend Du Ponceau. He obviously enjoyed the company and friendship of “learned men,” and he worked actively to introduce scholars to each other, either through his correspondence or personally. For example, he hosted Sunday breakfasts for visitors to Philadelphia, and he was a regular at the so-called Wistar Parties, that brought together companies of scholars for more formal gatherings. After 1822 Vaughan did not just work in Philosophical Hall; he also resided there. He had already been renting for several years the cellar for the storage of his wines and liquors. He now established his home in rooms formerly occupied by the studio and gallery of the painter Thomas Sully (1783-1872, APS 1835). In 1823, Sully painted the librarian’s portrait.

Vaughan was well-known to the citizens of Philadelphia. His reputation as a generous and “good” man was due not only to his work with the Philosophical Society, but also to his untiring commitment to be patron to all deserving young men. Indeed, Jared Sparks (1789-1866, APS 1837) described him as a “recommender-general of all schoolmasters, inventors, young men just entering on their professions, and every sort of personage, whose characters are good, and who can be benefited by his aid.” In 1838 a group of admirers founded the “Vaughan Club” to honor their friend. Members were required to bring a bottle of the finest and rarest wine to their annual meetings. The meeting could not be adjourned until every bottle had been consumed.

Vaughan was particularly admired for his philanthropic activities. “Who is there here who does not know Mr. John Vaughan?,” asked the Boston Daily Courier in the fall of 1841, when Vaughan was in his late eighties. “His doctrine is good works, and his practice squares with it.” He was an active member of the First Congregational Unitarian Church, where he occasionally occupied the pulpit. He also belonged to many local learned and philanthropic societies, and he served as officer in most. He was president of the Pennsylvania Institution for the Instruction of the Blind, president of the Society of Sons of St. George, a director of the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, vice president of the Athenaeum of Philadelphia, a trustee of the Unitarian Society, and a councilor of the Historical Society of Pennsylvania and the Athenian Institute. Furthermore, he was secretary and treasurer of the Philadelphia Chamber of Commerce, a director of the Insurance Company of North America and of the Delaware Insurance Company; and an agent of the firm of E. I. Du Pont de Nemours and Company.

In 1841 Vaughan, who never married, died in his rooms in Philosophical Hall. The beneficiaries of his bequest included his friend Jacob Snider, Jr., who had been brought up by Vaughan, as well as various learned and philanthropic societies, including the APS. His funeral was attended by numerous respected citizens and representatives of the charitable and learned institutions he had supported during his life. A printed card that was circulated among those in attendance described John Vaughan simply as a man “Who went about doing good.”

Vaughan’s fifty years of service to the Philosophical Society were overshadowed by the discovery after his death that he had mingled the Society’s funds with his own. As a result, the Philosophical Society never published a biographical memoir of its long-term librarian and treasurer.