John Vaughan (wine merchant)

John Vaughan (15 January 1756 – 30 December 1841) was a wine merchant, philanthropist, and long-time treasurer and librarian of the American Philosophical Society. A native of England, Vaughan settled in Philadelphia in 1782, becoming a respected citizen of the city, working tirelessly for many literary, scientific and benevolent causes. During five decades of service to the Society, Vaughan was instrumental in building its library collection and introducing many scientists and historians to each other through his letters and Sunday breakfasts.

John Vaughan was born in London on 15 January 1756, one of ten surviving children of Samuel Frier Vaughan, a London merchant banker and West India planter, and Sarah Hallowell, daughter of Benjamin Hallowell, a Boston merchant and founder of Hallowell, Maine. The family were liberals who attended the Presbyterian, later Unitarian, Gravel Pit Chapel, Hackney, where the dissenting minister and political radical Richard Price preached.

As with his four brothers Benjamin Vaughan, Vaughan attended Warrington Academy, 1772-1774. In preparation for a mercantile career, John Vaughan was sent abroad, first to Jamaica (1776), and then to France (1778), where he worked for a merchant house in Bordeaux, and met Benjamin Franklin. In 1778, following the signing of the Treaty of Amity and Commerce, Vaughan, who, as a British subject, was faced with possible arrest or deportation, declared himself an American. However, he was unable to procure a certificate to that effect, and resided in Spain for a while before removing to the United States in 1782. Vaughan settled in Philadelphia, where he became a prosperous wine merchant, with warehouse and offices at 109 & 111, South Front Street, in the commercial quarter.

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