Robert Vaughn (Montana rancher)

Robert Vaughan was born on June 5, 1836, to Edward and Elizabeth Vaughan. The family lived near the village of Dinas Mawddwy in what was at the time the county of Meirionnydd (now the southeast part of the county of Gwynedd) in Wales, United Kingdom. He was the third of six children. His siblings included Jane, Hugh, Robert, Edward, John, and Mary. His father was a warden of the royal forest. There he learned English, After three months, he traveled to Palmyra, New York, to visit his father's sister. He stayed there a year, then moved to Youngstown, Ohio, where he worked as a coal miner and farmer. Vaughan then moved from Youngstown to live with Hugh in McLean County, Illinois, where he assisted on his brother's farm for three months in the summer of 1863 before moving to Fairbury, Illinois, where he mined coal. Shortly after arriving in the United States, Vaughan resolved to become an American citizen. The official who filled out the paperwork misspelled his name as "Vaughn", an error noticed only after his citizenship had been approved. To avoid legal difficulties, Vaughan used the erroneous spelling for the rest of his life. ==Travel to and early life in Montana==

On March 4, 1864, Vaughn and six others left Youngstown for the gold fields of the Idaho Territory. They traveled by horse-drawn wagon to Council Bluffs, Iowa (which took 25 days), crossed the Mississippi River by ferryboat, and arrived in Omaha, Nebraska. They joined a large train of 65 wagons taking the Oregon Trail to points west. They followed the trail along the North Platte River until they reached the junction with the Bozeman Trail (about northeast of Fort Laramie in Wyoming). John Bozeman, who had blazed the Bozeman Trail only the year before, led the Vaughn party and 19 other wagons out along the trail. The party was joined by other wagons coming in from Fort Laramie, and soon numbered more than 100 wagons. The wagon train arrived in Alder Gulch (near Virginia City, Madison County, Montana) on July 13, 1864. They were startled to learn they were not in the Idaho Territory but rather in the Montana Territory, which Congress had created on May 26, 1864, out of part of the Idaho Territory. His goal was to get rich mining for gold in Montana. He spent July and August working for the company of Boon & Vivian mining gold as a day laborer. In September 1864, he and four other men headed east (encountering petrified wood in the Tom Miner Basin in what is now Park County), but found no gold deposits. They returned to Alder Gulch having spent 29 days in the wilderness. In December 1864, Vaughn and three others took two mules and followed the Madison River to the Missouri River and thence to Last Chance Gulch, in what is now the city of Helena, Montana. He moved to nearby Nelson Gulch, and was present when a gigantic gold nugget worth $2,000 was discovered on the Maxwell & Rollins Co. claim on July 3, 1865. He stayed in Nelson Gulch for three years, working first as a miner and then opening a meat market. His goal still was to get rich mining, but he had no luck doing so. ==The Vaughn Ranch==

While living in Nelson Gulch, Vaughn became convinced that Montana was excellent ranching and farming country. In the fall of 1869, he traveled into Chouteau County, Montana, which at the time covered nearly a sixth of the state. About upstream from where the Sun River joined the Missouri River, he decided to homestead. He returned to Helena and filed paperwork to claim the land, and learned he was the first individual to formally file for a homestead in Chouteau County. Over the next few years, numerous homesteads and small settlements were established along the Sun River. A town, originally named Sun River Crossing, grew up near "The Leavings" (where the road left the Sun River valley), and Vaughn and his neighbors constructed an irrigation ditch that allowed them to grow barley, oats, potatoes, and wheat. Although Vaughn started out farming, he quickly turned to ranching. He imported a large number of pure-bred cattle and horses, and his horses were some of the best in the state. He returned in 1883 with Vaughn and several surveyors, and platted a permanent settlement on the south side of the river. The city's first citizen, Silas Beachley, arrived later that year. The town plat was filed on September 30, 1884. By 1887 the town had 1,200 citizens, and in October of that year the St. Paul, Minneapolis & Manitoba Railway (later part of the Great Northern Railway) arrived in the city. Great Falls was incorporated on November 28, 1888. ==Marriages==

On August 25, 1886, 50-year-old Robert Vaughn married 31-year-old Elizabeth Donahue of Toronto, Ontario, Canada. She gave birth to a daughter, Arvonia Elizabeth Vaughn, on January 1, 1888. Elizabeth died of complications from childbirth twelve days later. When she grew up, Arvonia Vaughn married civil engineer Hugh Max Sprague, a native of Fullerville, New York, on October 4, 1911. The couple had four children, one of whom died in infancy. On January 17, 1893, Vaughn married Ella de Vee, a native of Indiana, but the couple soon divorced. ==Great Falls==

Robert Vaughn was devastated by his young wife's death. He determined to sell his ranch and move into Great Falls. In 1889, he began construction of two of the earliest buildings to be constructed in the city. The first was the Arvon Block (named for his daughter), a 40-room hotel with a modern and sophisticated horse stable, located at 114-116 First Avenue South. The other was the Vaughn Block, the city's first apartment building, located at the corner of Central Avenue and Third Street South. Both were completed in 1890. Vaughn and his daughter moved into rooms at the Vaughn Block. Vaughn sold his ranch in 1890 to "Captain" Thomas Couch, a Cornish immigrant and expert miner who managed the Boston and Montana Consolidated Copper and Silver Mining Company. In 1890, the North Western Coal and Navigation Company constructed the Great Falls & Canada Railway, a narrow-gauge railway () which ran from Sweet Grass, Montana (at the Canada–U.S. border) to a terminus adjacent to the Vaughn ranch. Designed to carry coal to Lethbridge, Alberta, the railroad was dubbed the "Turkey Trail". The railroad led to settlement around the terminus. In 1910, Couch platted a town there, named Vaughn after Robert Vaughn. ==Death==

In his last years, Vaughn suffered from severe osteoarthritis. He needed a cane, and later a crutch, to walk. He moved in with his daughter and son-in-law as his health worsened, and died at their home on March 23, 1918, aged 81. Methodist preacher William "Brother Van" Van Orsdel officiated at his funeral. Robert Vaughn was buried beneath a large obelisk in Highland Cemetery (now Old Highland Cemetery) near Great Falls, as are his close family members. ==Then and Now==

In 1900, Robert Vaughn published a book titled Then and Now, or, Thirty-Six Years in the Rockies: Personal Reminiscences of Some of the First Pioneers of the State of Montana: Indians and Indian Wars: The Past and Present of the Rocky Mountain Country: 1864-1900. Vaughn conceived of the book as a collection of the letters he had written to his daughter, Arvonia. (The first was written seven weeks after her birth.) Over time, however, Vaughn expanded his vision of the book to include pieces written by other pioneers of the Old West (some republished from other sources, but many written specifically for Vaughn's book). Vaughn also changed the audience for whom the book was written, expanding it to include the general public. Vaughn's good friend, the nationally famous "cowboy artist" Charles Marion Russell, illustrated the book. It was only the second book illustrated by Russell. Historian Dave Walter said that Then and Now "affords a rare glimpse into the early white settlement of Montana" and declared it "...a remarkable contribution to 'the Montana story'". Vaughn, who lived close to Russell, collected about 25 of Russell's paintings during his lifetime. Among the more notable of these are There May Be Danger Ahead (1893), Trouble on the Horizon (1893), Plunder on the Horizon (1894), Indians Hunting Buffalo (1894), Attack on the Mule Train (1894), and The Ambush (1896). Both The Ambush and another important Russell work, Big Nose George and the Road Agents (1895), are based on a story about stagecoach robbers told by Vaughn to Russell in a letter. ==References==