Sacred to the Memory

Circa 1927 Monument to John D Vaughn. Photo by Peter Hill.

By Peter Hill

In 1927, everybody who was anybody turned out to honor this deceased veteran of both the American Revolution and the War of 1812, the only such dual war veteran buried in Florida. From across Nassau County hundreds of students, teachers, Marines, politicians and generations of his family gathered to pay homage to a man who at that time was the epitome of a nation’s war heroes, assuming one’s nation was “Dixie!” As one of the original Confederate States of America, and years before the first publication of Gone with the Wind, Florida was wedded to the “lost cause” myth of Southern martyrdom, so much so that reporters noted that the last surviving Confederate soldier in Florida carried a Confederate battle flag to his memorial despite the fact the man being honored had died before there was even a Confederate States of America. Vaughn never had to make the decision of choosing between Dixie or standing with the still young American nation that was “conceived in liberty and dedicate to the proposition that all men are created equal” as President Lincoln would describe America in his iconic Gettysburg Address three years after Vaughn’s death.

Dedication of the Monument in 1927. Photo Courtesy of the Amelia Island Museum of History.

Boy soldier, Indian fighter, slave owner, John Daniel Vaughn was born in Boston in 1763 at the close of the French and Indian War that same year. Ramifications of that war would shape the course of his life. Angered that Britain restricted the emigration of American pioneers into western lands they considered theirs by right of conquest, and chafing under tax schemes imposed on them to pay for the enormous costs of the war by Parliament in London, Bostonians became The Sons of Liberty, and Boston became the cradle of revolt and eventually revolution. Too young to participate in the key events of 1775 like the battles at Lexington & Concord, Bunker Hill or even the forced evacuation of the British from Boston in March of 1776, young Vaughn would not become a soldier until January of 1777. Even then he lied about his age, stating he was the required sixteen years when in fact he was fourteen years old for a couple of months. Initially a drummer boy, Vaughn soon became a private in Captain Wiley’s company of Colonel Michael Jackson’s 9th Massachusetts Regiment. In 1777 the regiment would participate in the critical Saratoga, New York campaign which resulted in the surrender of a British army invading New York from Canada. King Louis XVI of France, impressed with the surprise American success at Saratoga, and itching to avenge the loss of France’s North American territories in the French and Indian Wars, decided France should join the American cause. This decision that would change the history of America, France and the world. After Saratoga, Vaughn’s regiment was assigned with protecting West Point on the Hudson River from the British Army occupying New York City.

Spirit of ’76 by Archibal Willard painted in 1876.

With the surrender of the British Army at Yorktown in October of 1781, Great Britain had lost two of her armies in the American War. The “Patriot King” as George III styled himself, wanted to continue the war. However, the Parliament of Great Britain did not. Officially, the war would last another two years while diplomats in Paris hashed out the terms and new borders of Canada, New Spain (Mexico) and the United States. With little actual fighting, and after four plus years of service, Vaughn returned to civilian life. However, an oversight of the Treaty of Paris of 1783 was how to deal with the Iroquois Indians, allies of the British, in what was then known as the old Northwest. Under pressure from Americans, the Iroquois had fled to Canada during the Revolution, however, they were now returning to lands they themselves had won from the French and their Indian allies in the previous century. This brought them in conflict with land hungry, American settlers pouring over the Alleghany Mountains. While Congress had quickly disbanded the American Army in the belief standing armies were an open invitation to tyranny, Congress realized the need to establish peace on the frontier, especially in what is now western Pennsylvania, would require trained, professional soldiers. Vaughn, now in his prime and having known little of life outside the army, joined the First American Regiment, formed by Congress in June of 1784, and commanded by Lieutenant Josiah Harmar. By October of 1784, Harmar had secured a temporary peace with the Iroquois with the Treaty of Fort Stanwix, which stipulated they cede the western part of Pennsylvania in what is remembered in Pennsylvania as the “Last Purchase.”

Drawing of Fort Harmar in 1785.

A further ten years of bloody back-and-forth conflict occurred before the confederated Indian tribes were finally defeated at the Battle of Fallen Timbers in October of 1794 near present day Toledo, Ohio. With the close of hostilities in the old Northwest, Vaughn, now an army lieutenant, was stationed at Burnt Fort, Georgia on the Satilla River. In 1796 he married a woman from a wealthy family, Rhoda Effingham, thus securing his economic future. Around this time, the Vaughns received a land grant on Amelia Island from the Spanish Government which had regained control of Florida as the result of Spain’s actions during the American Revolutionary War. Spain was looking for settlers to replace departing British planters to make Florida a viable economic proposition which had always been a challenge for the Spanish crown. In 1797 the new couple built a mansion on the Amelia River that they called “the Old Nest.” Destroyed by fire and rebuilt and renamed over the years, parts of their original house remain on the property to this day!

Spanish Land Grant of 1797. Vaughn’s property is in yellow. Image courtesy of the Amelia Island Museum of History.

Summaries of Vaughn’s life say he also served in the War of 1812 against Great Britain but provide few details. Indeed, the great ceremony in 1927 to rededicate his grave was sponsored by the American Daughters of the War of 1812. Given Vaughn’s age of nearly 50 years at the outbreak of the war, it’s probable that he served only in logistics or administrative roles. Referred to by some historians as the Second American War of Independence, The War of 1812 could also be fairly called The Great American Land Grab Gone Awry War! Ostensibly fought to protect American navigation rights on the high seas, Washington politicians envisioned American armies sweeping into Canada and bringing the entire North American Continent under their control while the British were preoccupied with their existential fight with Napoleon Bonaparte’s France. The Hawk’s hadn’t counted on Canada’s few soldiers, many of whom were from Royalist American families unceremoniously booted from America at the end of our Revolution, and a few British regiments fighting the invading Americans to a standstill along the Niagara River Frontier, a point of pride for patriotic Canadians to this day. With Napoleon defeated, Britain turned its considerable might against America in 1814, and the Hawks even suffered the indignity of watching the White House burned down by the vengeful British! It was only in the South that American dreams of conquest were realized. Jackson’s Tennessee Volunteers and Georgia militia defeated Britain’s allies, the Red Stick band of the Creek Indians, at Horseshoe Bend in1814. After the battle, Jackson controversially forced all the Creeks tribes, including allied tribes, to cede huge tracts of land to the U.S. More famously, Jackson crushed a British Army comprised of experienced veterans of the Napoleonic Wars before New Orleans in January of 1815. After a Status Quo Antebellum peace with Britain, Jackson, who hated the British, Indians and Spanish in that order, continued hostilities- in what is known as the first Seminole War (1817-1818) into Spanish owned, western Florida. Spain, weaken by Napoleonic France’s invasion from 1808-1814, and revolutions across their provinces in the Americas, agreed to relinquish all of Florida to the United States in 1819.

Drawing of War of 1812 Militia by James Lane Allen (1849-1925.)

Returning to Amelia Island, Vaughn used slaves to grow cotton on his plentiful lands on the island and in Yulee. At the rededication ceremony in 1927, his family claimed he was beloved by his slaves who carried him down to the river in his later years to help him fish. This is a dubious assertion since his grave was vandalized by former slaves when Union forces took over the island in 1963, necessitating the need for a new monument. Perhaps the truth lies in the middle. It would certainly be more pleasant to sit down by the river watching over the old man fish instead of chopping cotton! While their house endures, Vaughn’s descendants no longer own his grand estate, and the graveyard where the Vaughn is buried is being encroached by new condominiums to the west. The once honored Vaughn graves are entrusted to the care of strangers.

John Daniel Vaughn at the Old Nest. Image courtesy of the Amelia Island Museum of History.