Robert Vaughn

Who was Robert Vaughn?

Robert Vaughn was a Welsh immigrant to the United States and an important rancher, farmer, and businessman in the U.S. state of Montana before and after the early years of its statehood. He homesteaded the Vaughn ranch in the Sun River valley in Montana, building a sandstone mansion as his home there. The town of Vaughn, Montana, is named in his honor, and helped co-found the city of Great Falls, Montana. He built the Arvon Block, a hotel and stable in Great Falls, one of the city's earliest buildings; the ranch and the hotel are both listed on the National Register of Historic Places.

Vaughan left home at the age of 19 to take a position as a gardener for the wealthy banker Benjamin Heywood Jones in Liverpool.

He learned English, and in the fall of 1858 traveled to Rome, New York, in the United States to visit his brother Hugh, who had emigrated to the U.S. a year earlier. Vaughan traveled to America without telling his parents, and fully intended to return to Wales. 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.