William J. Vaughn

William James Vaughn was born on February 15, 1834 at Black Bluff, a settlement along the Alabama River in Wilcox County, Alabama.[1][2] His father was James Pulliam Vaughn and his mother, Susan Rebecca Richards.[2]

Vaughn received an A.B. in 1857 and an A.M. in 1860 from the University of Alabama in Tuscaloosa.[3] Landon Garland (1810–1895) was one of his professors.[4] He then received a Legum Doctor from the University of Mississippi in Oxford, Mississippi.[2]

Vaughn started his career at his alma mater, the University of Alabama, where he tutored Mathematics from 1857 to 1860.[2][3] He continued to teach at Alabama during the American Civil War: as an Instructor of Latin and Greek from 1860 to 1863, and as a Professor of Mathematics from 1863 to 1865.[2][3][5]

Shortly after the war, from 1865 to 1866, Vaughn served as Principal of the Tuscaloosa Female College, a defunct women's college in Tuscaloosa, Alabama.[2] He then served as Principal of Centenary Institute, a defunct boarding school in Summerfield, Alabama, from 1867 to 1871.[2] He returned to the University of Alabama to teach Physics and Astronomy from 1871 to 1873.[2] He went on to serve as the President of the defunct Tennessee Female College in Franklin, Tennessee, from 1873 to 1878.[2] Shortly after, he returned again to the University of Alabama, where he served as Professor of Mathematics again from 1878 to 1882.[2] He also founded its Department of Engineering in 1881-1882.[2]

Vaughn spent the rest of his career at Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tennessee, a newly established college thanks to a gift from railroad magnate Cornelius Vanderbilt.[2][6] He was recruited by his former professor and now Vanderbilt University Chancellor, Landon Garland (1810–1895).[6] He lived at the Vaughn House on the Vanderbilt University campus, now home to the Robert Penn Warren Center for the Humanities.[6] He was Professor of Mathematics from 1882 to 1896, and Professor of Mathematics and Astronomy from 1896 to his death in 1912.[2] One of his students was Edward Emerson Barnard (1857–1923).[4] He also served as the main librarian (a precursor to Dean of Libraries) at Vanderbilt University from 1886 to his death.[2] He also founded the Vanderbilt chapter of the Phi Beta Kappa Society, an honor society.[6]

Additionally, Vaughn was a renowned book collector and an avid reader.[6] He read more than ten foreign languages, including Sanskrit and Russian.[6] He owned about 6,000 books, five hundred of which were about the French Emperor Napoleon (1769-1821); they were all donated to the Vanderbilt University library after his death.[6]

On August 17, 1865, shortly after the Civil War, Vaughn married Abbie Maria Scott (1841-1923) in Marion, Alabama.[2] He was thirty-one and she was twenty-four.[2] They had three children:

• William Massey Vaughn (August 6, 1866 – November 26, 1949).[2]
• Eugene Houghton Vaughn (October 25, 1868 – March 6, 1920).[2] He married Margaret Musgrave.[2]
• Harry Scott Vaughn (January 4, 1870 – February 14, 1958).[2] He married Florence Sloan.[2]

Vaughn died on December 1, 1912 in Nashville, Tennessee.[1][2] His portrait, taken circa 1850, can be seen in the William Stanley Hoole Special Collections Library at the University of Alabama.[1] His grandson, William S. Vaughn (1903–1996), was a prominent businessman who served on the Board of Trust of Vanderbilt University from 1952 to 1995.