1925 Biography - J. Byron Vaughan

J. Byron Vaughan, M. D. A physician and surgeon whose home for the past five years has been in the City of Monroe, but prior to that at Collinston, Dr. J. B. Vaughan represents an old and distinguished family of the Bastrop community of Louisiana.

The Vaughan ancestry runs back into American Colonial history to some of the very first settlements made in New Hampshire when that was a part of the Massachusetts Colony. Doctor Vaughan's grandfather, W. H. Vaughan, was one of several brothers who left New England and sought out new homes and opportunities in the West and Southwest, going into a different state or territory and one of them to old Mexico. The Vaughans have been characteristically a strong and vigorous race of pioneer people. The grandfather, W. H. Vaughan, came to Louisiana and settled in Morehouse Parish in 1843, that being a year before the parish was organized. It is recalled that Grandmother Vaughan brought with her from New England the first cook stove ever seen in this locality, and it was an object of great curiosity for some years. W. H. Vaughan acquired by Government grant a large tract of land in North Louisiana. For several years he lived on his plantation and then established his family in the parish seat at Bastrop.

Dr. J. B. Vaughan was born at Bastrop in 1877, son of Capt. H. D. and Mary Clementine (Holloway) Vaughan. Captain Vaughan was a native of Michigan and a child when his parents came to Louisiana in 1843. For many years he was a prominent steamboat captain on the Ouachita River and tributaries. He was a brother of the late Frank Vaughan, a brilliant lawyer and member of the famous Bastrop bar of the early days when that bar represented some of the most conspicuous ability and legal talent of any section of Louisiana.

Dr. J. B. Vaughan attended public schools at Monroe, and at one time was a pupil of Prof. Henry E. Chambers, author of the present history. He graduated in medicine at Tulane University in 1901, and then returned to his home town of Collinston. He remained there engaged in a busy general practice until 1919, when he transferred his residence to Monroe, having his offices in the Ouachita National Bank Building. He is a skilled physician and surgeon and a member of the Louisiana State and the American Medical associations, and is president of the Ouachita Parish Medical Society. He is a member of the Masonic fraternity, the Rotary Club, and the Episcopal Church.

In 1901 Doctor Vaughan married Miss Minta Reily, eldest daughter of John B. and Betty (Ward) Reily, of Collinston, Louisiana.

Contributed 2021 Nov 04 by Mike Miller, from A History of Louisiana, by Henry E. Chambers, published in 1925, volume 2, page 233.