Oh, pioneers: Sam and Sarah

When I started this genealogy project over a year ago, I was driven (some have used the word obsessed, but I prefer to think of it as a passionate hobby) by a desire to meet my ancestors. But in the hierarchy of ancestors, not all are created equally. And the ancestors I was most eager to meet were my pioneer ancestors; the first people to leave the east and come to this beautiful place I now love so much: Wisconsin.

I'm fascinated by pioneers in general. People lived hard lives back then, and to find yourself in the middle of your life, packing up everything you owned that you could carry, cutting ties with everything and everyone you had ever known outside your immediate family, probably never to see them again, and traveling by covered wagon at a rate of 15 miles a day is a life that I cannot fully fathom.

They had to be unbelievably courageous to set out for unsettled areas with little knowledge of what lay beyond the scope of their current civilization. They had no real guarantees that they weren't traveling west to meet their imminent doom. They had to be a little desperate in their current situations to make that decision in the first place. They had to be optimistic enough to believe that a much better life was just over the Adirondacks. And they had to be just a little crazy, I think. The fact that I am descended from people like that never fails to astonish me. So initially, I had intended to research my family history just far enough back that I could meet my pioneer ancestors. In the case of the Vaughns, that meant researching back to Otis's parents, Sam and Sarah.

Sarah Hart Mills Vose Vaughn

Sarah Hart Mills Vose was born August 18, 1797 in Bridgewater, Vermont. Her father was a colonial patriot who had served briefly in Col. Moss Kelley's regiment in Rhode Island during the Revolutionary War. Her mother descended from the same Ingalls family that would eventually produce Laura Ingalls Wilder.

Sarah was my great-great-great-grandmother. She was five years older than Samuel Cole Vaughn, my great-great-great-grandfather. (When I imagine them courting, I envision that there were a lot of conversations that were the early 19th Century equivalent of, "Oh my god, you were barely in high school when Smash Mouth's Walkin' on the Sun was popular? I was in COLLEGE! Now I feel ancient!" Or, "I can't believe you weren't even alive when the Challenger exploded! It scarred me in kindergarten, and you weren't even born yet!") Did her friends tease her for being the early 19C equivalent of a cougar, a cradle-robber, an older woman? Did Sam and Sarah fall in love or was she simply approaching an age that was considered an "old maid" and wanted more out of her life than that stigma?

Sarah had her first child at 31, her last at 44. This is a pattern I see repeatedly on this side of my family -- delayed childbearing in an age when most people had their children much younger. Though her pregnancies would all be considered "high-risk" by today's standards, she only lost one baby in infancy, the unlucky Melvin. He was her second child; she had him when she was 34. But she went on to have four more healthy children. (Though fourth child Abbie would die at 14, her cause of death now lost to history.)

Samuel Cole Vaughn

Samuel Cole Vaughn was also born in Bridgewater, Vermont. His father died when he was 9 years old and his mother when he was 18, making him the de facto parent to his eight-years-younger brother David. When David was 17, Sam and Sarah and David moved to Carver, Massachusetts, where Sam and David trained as joiners; Sam remained an expert carpenter all his life and passed the skills down to his sons as well. He was also a farmer, at a time when it was notoriously difficult to be a farmer in the east. The soil is bad, the land is steep and rocky and hard to till, the growing season is short, and there were too many people attempting to make a living from too little fertile land.

When Sarah was 31, they were still living in Massachusetts and their first child Benjamin came along. Sometime between Ben's birth and Melvin's two years later, they headed west, to Michigan. Melvin came into the world in Tecumseh, Michigan (and sadly departed again just as quickly.) Delia was born in 1833, and they were still in Tecumseh (which is about 40 miles southwest of Ann Arbor and had only existed since 1824.) In 1835, Abbie was born in Franklin, Michigan. At that point, for reasons unknown, they had moved 70 miles north and were now northwest of Detroit. But that move didn't last long -- within about a year they'd be moving again.

Sarah, a little later in life

They were in Franklin, Michigan during the winter of 1836-1837. It was an incredibly brutal one, possibly the worst Midwestern winter in modern history. On Dec. 20, 1836, an exceptional cold front moved with hurricane-force winds across the plains and the Upper Midwest and by some accounts, temperatures dropped 60 degrees in a matter of minutes, from 40F to -20F. Wild animals, livestock and unprepared humans froze to death in a matter of hours. In Illinois, two men crossing a prairie became disoriented by the storm and got lost. One killed his horse and climbed into the carcass to keep warm, to no avail; he was found frozen to death inside the dead animal the next day.

In Spring Prairie, Wisconsin, (where - spoiler alert - Sam and Sarah would end up in March of 1837), the event was remembered as "the four terrible cold days." Another early Walworth County settler, S.A. Dwinnell, arrived in November of 1836. His account of that winter appears in a history of Walworth County from 1890:

The pioneers of Wisconsin must ever remember the 20th of December, for one of the most sudden changes to severe cold ever experienced in our history. It had rained all day upon some fifteen inches of snow. Early in the evening, the wind veered to the northwest and the temperature ran down at a rapid rate. Having no thermometer, I can form no certain estimate of the intensity of the cold. It soon became unendurable in our cabin, and, building a large fire and hanging up blankets before it, I saw down in front of them to keep from freezing.

It was so terribly cold that, had a person been caught four or five miles from a house, he must have perished. Fortunately, few were thus exposed. James Van Slyke, with his hired man, were on their way from Belvidere, Ill., to his house, at the head of Geneva Lake, with a drove of hogs. They had reached Big Foot Prairie, three miles from home, when the change came. They soon left their drove and started at a rapid rate for their house. Van Slyke succeeded in the undertaking, but his boots were so loaded with ice that it took a teakettle full of boiling water to thaw it off, as his wife afterward told me.

A mile from home, the hired man, named Disbro, fell, exhausted and overcome with the intensity of the cold. He must have perished had not a man, providentially at the house, started out at once and brought him in. As it was, his feet were so frozen that he lost several of his toes, which Mrs. Van Slyke amputated with her shears, having made unsuccessful efforts to obtain a surgeon to do it. All the hogs, except two, froze to death that night.

From other Wisconsin and Minnesota reports, we can deduce that the weather hovered between -30F and -20F during that time, after which it probably warmed up to about 0F and started snowing relentlessly.

Mr. Dwinnell was entirely alone in his cabin during the four terrible cold days of the last of December, and had hard work to keep himself alive. He says, “It soon became unendurable in our cabin, and building a large fire and hanging up blankets before it, I sat down in front of them to keep from freezing.”  Notwithstanding  the cold and the deep snow, Mr. Dwinnell got so thoroughly lonesome that on the 20th day of January he  started on a journey of forty-five miles to have a visit with some friends in Belvidere, Ill., then a little hamlet of six families.

In other words, for an entire month Dwinnell sat alone in a bitterly cold log cabin struggling not to freeze to death, having no contact with any other human beings, until it became necessary to risk his life with a 45-mile journey on horseback in the cold and snow just so that he would not lose his mind. Pioneers had to be the toughest kind of people to survive.

Sam, posing with the tools of his carpentry trade

We don't know what that bitterly cold winter was like for Sam and Sarah, 8-year-old Ben, 3-year-old Delia and 1-year-old Abbie in Michigan. It is likely that they considered themselves lucky to have survived it. And in the spring of 1837, a now 40-year-old Sarah packed up her  three young children and what she could of her home and traveled again, most likely by covered wagon, even deeper into what was then the Northwest Territory, which had until very recently been occupied by Potawatami Indians. Sam's sister Mary, her husband Isaiah Dike and their two young sons came as well, most likely from Ohio. Together, they settled in Walworth County, at the same small settlement at which Dwinnell had arrived just months earlier: Spring Prairie.

We don't know exactly what Spring Prairie would have looked like when Sam and Sarah arrived in March of 1837. Dwinnell later claimed that the spring was so slow in arriving that year that the trees did not bud until June, so it's likely they found a very wintry landscape. And the demographics of the area probably remained similar to what Dwinnell had seen when he arrived four months earlier:

On the morning of the 16th of November, 1836, I took the trail of Black Hawk, at Belvidere (IL), at the point where, four years before, he sunk his canoes in the mouth of Piskasaw, and, with his army, took the land. His encampments were still visible every six or eight miles, as I proceeded northward to Big Foot Prairie, where I entered Wisconsin, at 4 o’clock p.m. The day was cloudy, cold and cheerless; the temperature at the freezing point; the streams swollen by recent rains, and unabridged. Several times I was obliged to wade from four to six rods. As night set in, snow fell plentifully. Big Foot Lake (Geneva Lake -ed.) was in view at my left. At seven o’clock evening, I reached the “Outlet of Big Foot,” near Geneva (Lake Geneva - ed.), having traveled thirty-five miles without seeing a human dwelling. The settlement consisted of five families, living in rude log cabins, without floors, chimneys or chambers, the roofs covered with shakes, and hardly a nail used in the construction of their dwellings. There were then twenty-seven families in what is now the county of Walworth, and all but four in the eastern half of it; all living in log cabins. All of them had come in since Spring, and had put under cultivation about 80 acres. I settled on Spring Prairie...”

Dwinnell actually settled in what would come to be known as LaFayette, but the account explains that there were only 22 acres of land under cultivation in Spring Prairie at that time. It goes on to describe:

The trouble and difficulty of reaching and selecting a claim was so great that settlers were often obliged to bring in their families before any shelter was provided for them, either camping in their wagons, or remaining at the house of some “neighbor,” three or four miles away perhaps, while the logs were prepared for the little cabin, where one room should serve for kitchen, living room and sleeping room for the family.

The hardships of getting there and getting established were obviously enormous, but what the pioneers found in Spring Prairie was beautiful land that was ideally suited to farming. Dwinnell goes on to say:

I found the place to be unsurpassed for beauty and fertility. It was one mile in width by four in length, with a gently undulating surface, surrounded on all sides by beautiful groves of timber. Upon one side were several hundred acres of heavy timber, consisting of oak, ash, basswood, butternut and maple, in which was a large sugar-bush, which had been the annual resort of the Indians for making sugar. Their wigwams, sap-trough and boiling kettles had been left – evidently for future use – a pleasure which they were never again to enjoy. In the groves surrounding the prairie were springs of the purest water, from which flowed streams in all directions – one of which was sufficiently large to the turn the machinery of  a flouring mill, shortly afterwards erected a short distance from its source.

Samuel C. Vaughn laid a claim just north of the modern-day intersection of Spring Prairie Road and Hargraves Road, and built a small log cabin on the property. Sam must have been crazy for apples, because in addition to everything else they must have packed into that covered wagon with them, he brought two dozen grafted apple trees from Michigan and planted them almost as soon as he arrived. Those trees bore the first apples ever grown in Walworth County, which must have made theirs a popular cabin to visit come fall.

Sarah a little older

The five of them (and soon, six of them) lived in that one-room log cabin for 2 1/2 years, until the fall of 1839, when Sam built a frame house on the property. In 1838, Sam's brother David, with his wife and two young sons, had come to Spring Prairie as well, and once the frame house was finished, Sam gave the log cabin to David and his family. However just a few months later in December of 1839, the log cabin caught fire and burned to the ground. Miraculously, David and his wife Rebecca, for no logical reason at all, had woken up their boys and taken them along that night to visit Sam and Sarah in the new house, so no one was hurt. But the destruction of Sam's log cabin is credited as the first fire in Walworth County. (Lots more on David and Rebecca Vaughn in a future post.)

 

The Vaughn farm. The frame house that Sam built in 1839 is on the left. This photo likely dates from before the 1880s.

In November of 1838, Sarah gave birth to Phebe, presumably in the log cabin; Sam and Sarah were now parents to four surviving children. And finally in 1841, when Sarah was 44 years old and they were living in the frame house, Otis was born. 

The Vaughn family was now complete and had found their place in the great Northwestern territory. Otis was seven years old before Wisconsin was admitted as the 30th state in the union. He would call it home his whole life. Sam and Sarah, after a lifetime of restlessness, of moving from Vermont to Massachusetts to two different towns in Michigan, had finally found a place that made them say, "I love it here; let's never leave." And they never did.

Sam passed away in 1868. He is buried in Hickory Grove cemetery in Spring Prairie. Sarah continued living on the farm with Otis and Fannie until her death in 1884. She is buried next to her husband.

Sam and Sarah's shared monument in Hickory Grove Cemetery.

 *Note: All of the quotes and information about the early settlement of Walworth County in this post come from two sources: Albert Clayton Beckwith's History of Walworth County, Wis., published in 1912; and the indispensable History of Walworth County, Wis., published in 1882 by the Chicago Western Historical Society.

Otis's furniture

When I was growing up, I spent every Saturday night sleeping over at Genevieve's house. It was the same tiny house she and my grandfather built when they got married, a two-bedroom cottage of about 700 square feet (I'd be guessing) that they built for something like $2000 around 1940.

The table that we ate our meals at in that tiny house was a functional drop-leaf table that she positioned against a wall in between the couch and the back door. The space was so small that she almost never pulled up either side of the table, so I always thought it was just a small, rectangular table. She would occasionally tell me that my great-great-grandfather had "carved" the table (that was the word she used) from cherry trees in his yard. This always stuck with me, maybe because she so rarely spoke of her family.

The table that Otis carved from cherry trees on his farm and gave as a wedding gift to Ora and Clarence.

When Genevieve passed away, it was very important to her that certain things be passed down to me, her recipe box and that table among them. I was shocked to discover how well-crafted the table was, and to learn that there were several leaves that came with it; if they are all inserted, you could easily serve dinner for 12 around it.

It turns out that Otis (Genevieve's grandfather) was quite a master carpenter. He learned the trade from his father Sam (much more on him in the next post.) The table is actually one of three identical tables that Otis made -- he gave one to each of his daughters as their wedding gift. Genevieve ended up with Ora's table, and Corinne ended up with Edna's table. I now have both of those.

Otis Vaughn, carpenter extraodinaire

When Corinne passed away, she left a list of items in her house that she believed to be Vaughn heirlooms. I bought all of them from her estate to ensure they stayed in the family. So I am now the proud owner of several pieces of furniture that I can say with loving pride were handmade by my great-great-grandfather Otis: the two dining tables, eight chairs that he made to go with those dining tables, a nightstand or work table, and four rope-seat chairs that are incredible because the seats are made of tightly woven rope and have lasted incredibly well, considering they are probably about 130 years old.

The nightstand or work table (not sure which) that Otis made

The rope-seat chairs made by Otis. There are only three of them, which means he could have made them for Edna sometime after Corinne was born. Corinne was an only child and almost everything in her house came in sets of three instead of four.

Recipes: Potato-chip cookies

There's no attribution on this recipe card, but whoever invented these sounds like a genius to me.

Potato-chip cookies

Cream together 1 cup butter and 1/2 c. sugar till fluffy. Add one egg yolk. Cream again. Add 1 1/2 c. flour, 3/4 c. crushed potato chips and 1/2 c. of nuts. Drop from teaspoon, bake 12-15 minutes.

Potato-chip cookies, fondue'd

 UPDATE: I finally made these, and it turns out that they taste a lot like Scandinavian butter cookies, just a little potato chip-ier. A word to the wise: bake them in an oven that is no more than 350F; they burn easily. Not being a a fan of nuts, I omitted them and increased the potato chips to 1 c. (I also might recommend reducing the flour slightly) When they had cooled, I dipped each cookie in fondue chocolate to finish them off. They'd be good for a Christmas cookie sampler!

Fannie and Otis

Okay, so you've met my grandma Genevieve, Genevieve's mother Ora, and Ora's two sisters Edna and Hattie. And you know I am lucky to have lots of photos and clippings of all of these people thanks to a treasure trove of family history that I believe Edna compiled in the 1930s, and I believe she was inspired to do so after the death of her mother. So the collection that inspired this blog, that inspired me to learn about my family in the first place, that inspired this passionate new hobby that has consumed my life for the past year, began as a loving memorial to Ora, Edna and Hattie's parents: Fannie and Otis Vaughn.

Portraits of Otis and Fannie Vaughn, painted from photographs in my collection

So who were Fannie and Otis Vaughn?

Well, let's start with Fannie. Frances Ann Vaughn was born on April 11, 1847 in Lincolnshire, England. She was named after her grandmother, Frances Brittain, and she was the third of five children born to William and Elizabeth Sutton (Betsey) Brittain. She had a brother named John and a sister named Hannah (both of whom were older) and two younger brothers: William and Samuel. Around 1855, when her youngest brother was only about a year old, and Fannie herself was only 8, the family moved from England to Wisconsin, and they settled in Honey Creek, just a few miles away from Spring Prairie.

Fannie as a young woman

As I continue to go through the stories of my family, I am alternately awed by and in disbelief of a family's willingness to sell everything they owned except for what they could carry, and board a ship for a journey of several weeks across an ocean with very young children, only to face a long overland journey or a smaller boat trip to end up in the middle of the United States, a place they had never seen even in photographs before. It speaks to the quality of their character, and their sense of hopelessness in their home country. And I can't help but think, every time I read about a journey like this, that they must have had no idea exactly what they were getting into.

So, in the case of Fannie's family, why Wisconsin? Well, they came here because Fannie's uncle, Samuel Brittain, had come to America 20 years earlier, in 1834. After living in upstate New York, then Michigan (with short stops in Chicago and Milwaukee as well,) he finally landed in Walworth County in about 1837-1838. He was one of the earliest settlers of the county, which was only settled by white men for the first time in 1836 (more on that later.) He established a farm of 80 acres in Honey Creek and stayed there all his life. Two years later in 1839, his brother M.R. moved to Honey Creek as well. In 1855, their brother William brought his family, including Fannie, and so the Brittain family of Pinchbeck, Lincolnshire, England was fully transplanted to Honey Creek, Wisconsin, it seems. (Though I'm having trouble finding records, so it's possible they had other siblings in England who did not emigrate and I just haven't found them yet.)

At the same time that Fannie's uncle Samuel was settling in Honey Creek, Otis Vaughn's parents, Samuel C. Vaughn and Sarah H.M. Vose Vaughn, were establishing a farmstead in the fledgling village of Spring Prairie just a mile or two away. They came in the spring of 1837 with three children and had two more once they had moved here; Otis, the youngest, was born on March 29, 1841 in Spring Prairie. (One of the five children, a girl named Abbie, would die as a teenager. Lots more on Sam and Sarah, and Otis's early life, to come in a later post.)

Otis as a young man

Though I don't know exactly how Otis and Fannie met, it's safe to assume that since it was such a small community and they lived just a few miles from one another that Otis knew Fannie's uncles and probably met Fannie shortly after her arrival in the county. On December 6, 1864, when Fannie was just 17 years old, Otis Vaughn and Fannie Brittain were married in Spring Prairie. (The date is striking to me for taking place during the Civil War. There is a family rumor that Otis took advantage of the fact that you could pay someone to take your place in the Union army, probably because his aging father had already turned over most of the farming duties to Otis, and to lose the de facto head of the farmstead would have been a great hardship on the family.) Otis's father died just a few years later in 1868, leaving farmstead to Otis and Fannie. Otis's mother Sarah continued to live with them as well.

Otis and Fannie's wedding portrait, difficult to scan because of the daguerrotype case it's in

Otis and Fannie had their first child in 1870, a daughter they named Julia Augusta, but sadly she survived less than a year. (Her early death is a reminder of the tragic toll childhood diseases used to take on families in the days before vaccines were available.) In 1873, Hattie was born. Edna came in 1877 and Ora in 1884; there was an 11-year age difference between Hattie and Ora.

The scrapbook is overflowing with tales of Otis and Fannie's life, so much so that I feel like I know them. The picture of their life together that is painted by these news items is that of a very full life, one full of social events, community service, travel, close friendships and love and responsibility for family near and far.

Fannie, in the photo the portrait is drawn from

Here are some of the news items:

"MARRIED: At Burlington, December 6th, 1864, by Rev. S.H. Batteau, Mr. Otis E. Vaughn, of Spring Prairie, and Miss Fannie Brittain, of Honey Creek."

"(Date unknown): The ice cream social on the lawn of Otis Vaughn Wednesday evening was largely attended. The Young Ladies' Guild netted a good sum from the sale of cream."

"(Date unknown): Otis Vaughn, of this city; G.A.Palmer, of Vienna; and E.F. Buttles, of Waterford, are the jurors from this neighborhood who will serve for the May term of the United States circuit court in Milwaukee."

"(Date unknown) From the Elkhorn Blade: Otis Vaughn and family, of Burlington, Peter Howard and wife and L.G. Latham and wife (Otis's sister Delia - Ed.), journeyed northward on Saturday afternoon until they came to Idlewild at Lake Lauderdale, where a week will be spent in pleasure and resting. 'Dad' will keep the larder well supplied with fish."

 "(Date unknown) Mr. Otis Vaughn finds his family increased by one -- a very small one."

"(Date unknown, but sometime between 1877 and 1884) Mr. O.E. Vaughn of Spring Prairie, accompanied by his wife and two daughters (Ora wasn't born yet - Ed.), Mrs. Chas. Loomis, of this place (Fannie's sister Hannah), and Miss Noble, of Rochester, took their departure yesterday forenoon for Jewell County, Kansas, where they will remain three or four weeks, visiting friends and relatives. They go via. Freeport and Rock Island, and will arrive at their destination this afternoon. We wish them a pleasant journey and a safe return." (The relatives they are going to visit here are Fannie's brother William and his family, who had moved to Kansas after the Civil War.)

Fannie a little later in life

"(Date unknown) O.E. Vaughn has been repairing his barn, house and other buildings this summer, not having anything else to do, and he now has them fixed up in good shape. He thinks he would not like a job of tearing off plastering that lasted the year round."

"1884: Mr. and Mrs. O.E. Vaughn of Spring Prairie, celebrated the twentieth anniversary of their wedding, or China wedding, on Monday evening of last week, which proved a very enjoyable occasion from first to last. There was a very large attendance of friends, and neighbors, and a few from this village, and the bride and groom of twenty years ago were made the recipients of many fine presents of China ware."

"(Date unknown) Mr. and Mrs. Otis Vaughn, of Spring Prairie, returned to this village over the Central Railway last Wednesday morning after an extended trip to Canada and the East, having been absent two weeks. They visited relatives near Toronto, Canada, and attended an agricultural Fair at Toronto, which Mr. Vaughn says, compares very favorably with our fairs. He says the horses on exhibition were the finest he ever saw. The people are slow, but exceedingly polite. They stopped at Niagara Falls long enough to view the wonderful scenery of this gigantic cataract."

"(Date unknown) Mrs. Otis Vaughn and little daughter of Spring Prairie visited relatives and friends in Elkhorn last week."

"(Date unknown) Otis Vaughn and Main Hubbard filled their ice houses early last week and just in time too, it seems."

"(Date unknown) O.E. Vaughn has sold his trotting horse, "Black Prince."

"(Date unknown) Mr. O.E. Vaughn of Spring Prairie exchanged greetings with the [Elkhorn] Independent on Friday last."

"(Date unknown) Mr. Otis Vaughn and family, of Spring Prairie, moved into the village yesterday and today will make Burlington their permanent home. They now occupy the P.H. Cunningham house on the East side of the Fox River, but early next spring, Mr. Vaughn will build a fine residence on his lots on the corner of Washington and Dyer streets, at the rear of the Opera House.
   We welcome Mr. Vaughn and family as citizens of Burlington and hope their home in our midst may be pleasant and long continued."

"1888: Mr. Otis Vaughn is hauling stone for the foundation of his new residence to be built early next spring on his fine corner lot at the rear of the Opera House, opposite the old 'Sawyer property' on Washington and Dyer streets."

"1889:  Mr. Otis Vaughn and family moved into their new house on the corner of Washington and Dyer streets last week, and will soon be comfortably settled in their fine, cozy home."

"(Date unknown) Mr. Otis Vaughn is making wagons in the shop formerly occupied by Geo. Stohr, deceased. Mr. Vaughn is a thorough mechanic."

"(Date unknown) Mrs. Harriman and Mrs. Latham, of Elkhorn, made their brother, Mr. Otis Vaughn and family in this village, a pleasant visit last Friday, returning to the quiet village of Elkhorn in the evening after a days' pleasure viewing the sights of this bustling city. They thought our new Court House and electric lights were very fine. They don't see such modern improvements in the smaller villages."

Fannie in later years

"(Date unknown) About sixty were present at a progressive euchre party given by Mr. and Mrs. Joe Vaughn (Otis's first cousin and his wife - Ed.) Tuesday evening. Mr. Chas. Peck and Mrs. Hettie Hicks carried off head prizes, and the booby prizes were won by Herman Harris and Mrs. Otis Vaughn. All reported a very pleasant time."

Fannie and Otis and a dog

"(Date unknown) Mr. and Mrs. Otis Vaughn visited relatives in Elkhorn last Wednesday evening and a portion of Thursday, returning to their home in this village last Thursday afternoon."

"(Date unknown) Otis Vaughn and family visited at W. Merrick's Sunday."

"(Date unknown) Otis Vaughn is in Milwaukee this week doing duty as a juror in the U.S. District Court."

"1905: There isn't a happier man in town than Otis Vaughn. the cause of it is that he wears the title of grandpa since Saturday, Jan. 7, 1905, when a bright baby girl arrived at the home of Mr. and Mrs. J.J. Cheeseman (Hattie - Ed.) in Chicago."

"1917: A little son was born to Mr. and Mrs. Clarence Potter (Ora - Ed.) at their home in the town of LaFayette on Friday, Dec. 28th, 1917. It is needless to say that Grandpa and Grandma Vaughn are pleased over their first grandson."

Fannie (second row, far right) and Otis (third row, third from right I believe) pose with several other people in 1917, at the celebration of the 50th wedding anniversary of William W. (Billy) Vaughn and his wife Mary Clark Vaughn.

"1921: Otis Vaughn has received notice of the death of his brother Benjamin's widow, Martha Vaughn, at the home of her daughter, Mrs. Olive Berry, at Stockton, Calif., on November 29, 1921. She was born July 4, 1838, and was a sister of Sumner Vaughn, of Honey Creek. The family formerly lived at Spring Prairie, moving to Minnesota and later to the Pacific Coast. Her ashes were buried beside those of her husband at Yakima, Wash." (Lots more Otis's siblings and the confounding relationship between Ben and Martha Vaughn to come in a later post.)

Otis passed away in 1923. This court notice appears shortly thereafter: "Waller & Ruzicka, Attorneys, County Court, Racine County, In probate: In the matter of the last will of Otis E. Vaughn, deceased. Notice is hereby given, that at a special term of the country court to be held in and for the said county at the court house in the city of Racine in said county on the third Tuesday, being the 15th day of January, A.D. 1924, at the opening of court on that day the following matter will be heard and considered: The application of Fannie A. Vaughn, executrix of the will of Otis E. Vaughn deceased, late of Burlington in said county for the examination and allowance of her final account, and for the assignment of the residue of the estate of said deceased to such persons as are by law entitled thereto; and that the court find and determine whom the real estate owned by said deceased vested upon the death of said deceased, and for the determination and adjudication of the inheritance tax if any, payable in said estate. Dated December 18, A.D. 1923, By the court: Walter C. Palmer, County Judge."

Fannie as a widow, in front of the house at 602 Lewis St. in Burlington

Three years later, Fannie's sister Hannah died. "1926: Funeral services were held at the home of Mrs. Otis Vaughn on Lewis St. last Friday afternoon for Mrs. Charles Loomis, one of the well known matrons of this vicinity, who died the previous Wednesday, July 21, at the home of her daughter, Mrs. S.W. Hollister, at Oshkosh.
   Hannah Brittain was born in Lincolnshire, England, July 16, 1843. When a girl she came to America with her parents who settled near Honey Creek. In 1865 she was united in marriage with Mr. Loomis, and they settled on a farm south of the city where they lived until twenty-five years ago when they moved into Burlington. Mr. Loomis died in 1913 and for the past few years, Mrs. Loomis has spent the winters with her daughter, Mrs. S.W. Hollister*, at Oshkosh. One sister, Mrs. Otis Vaughn, and one brother, John Brittain, of Wasco, Calif., besides the daughter survive. Also one grandchild, Miss Edith Hollister."

Fannie died in 1931. Presumably her daughter Hattie was still living with her in the house in Burlington after moving back due to the untimely death of Hattie's husband in 1918. Fannie and Otis are both buried in the Hickory Grove Cemetery in Spring Prairie.

Long after they were gone, Otis and Fannie occupied a place of high esteem in the hearts of their family. In her letters, Corinne often spoke fondly of "Grandma and Grandpa Vaughn," -- it was clear that even in her 90s, she still felt the sun rose and set by them. And it was because of Corinne's annual summer trips to Burlington to visit Otis and Fannie that she and Genevieve were as close as they were.

Of all of the ancestors I have had the good fortune to "meet" through the process of researching my family history in Walworth County, Otis and Fannie are the ones I feel most connected to, and the most compelled by. They lived during such a pivotal part of Wisconsin history; Otis was born here seven years before Wisconsin was even admitted to the United States. (It was the 30th state to be admitted.) They watched Wisconsin develop from infancy through the Progressive era of the 1920s. Their lives were typical of the lives being lived all over the state -- small farming giving way to life in small cities as the state became more urbanized toward the end of the 19th century. They were members of the generation that transitioned Wisconsin from wilderness to organized community.

Their lives undoubtedly involved a lot of hard work, but they also seem to have taken much pleasure from their rich friendships within their extended families and their close-knit farm community. They appear to have lived full, rich lives and had a great effect on everyone who knew them. And really, what more could any of us hope for from our lives?

*An interesting sidenote: When she was a child, Hannah Brittain Loomis' daughter Lottie (the Mrs. S.W. Hollister mentioned here) looked eerily like me as a child. More to come on that in a future post.

Update (2/16/14): I have tracked down more records from Lincolnshire and I now know that Samuel, William and Deacon Brittain were actually the three youngest of the Brittain family of Pinchbeck, Lincolnshire. They had five older siblings: Richard, John, Thomas Caswell, Robert and Mary, all of whom presumably remained in England. Their parents, John Brittain and Frances Caswell (or Casswell) were married on 11/25/1802 in Horbling, Lincolnshire.