Subject: Help with Mr. Vaughan the packman
From: Jim Glanville <[log in to unmask]>
Date: Tuesday 16 December 2008. 2:45 pm.
To: [log in to unmask]

Fellow VA-Hist list subscribers:

In connection with the early colonial period history of Southwest 
Virginia I find the following quotation on page 40 in John Haywood, The 
Civil and Political History of the State of Tennessee, from its Earliest 
Settlement Up to the Year 1796; Including the Boundaries of the State 
(2nd. ed. Nashville: Publishing House Methodist Episcopal Church, South, 
1915 (originally published in 1823 and reprinted Overmountain Press, 
Johnson City, 1999).

"Mr. Vaughan, who lived as late as the year 1801, in the county of 
Amelia, in Virginia, was employed about the year 1740, as a packman to 
go to the Cherokee Nation with some Indian traders. The country was then 
but thinly inhabited to the west of Amelia; the last hunter's cabin that 
he saw was on Otter River, a branch of Staunton, now in Bedford County, 
Virginia …."

Based on the internal evidence, my working hypothesis is that Haywood 
relied on some document that detailed Vaughan's actual route -- possibly 
a document written by Vaughan himself or perhaps more likely by someone 
who knew Vaughan. Alternatively, it is just conceivable that Haywood 
actually met and interviewed Vaughan.

I would like to learn more about Vaughan (including any possible 
candidates to be packman Vaughan) and about the source of Haywood's 
information.

Can anyone help? Thanks.

Jim Glanville
Retired Chemist
201 Graves Avenue
Blacksburg, Virginia 24060

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