DUANE
Duane's take
Here's the story as the official marker tells it, and I'm gonna do right by it. Now, not every man who comes to Texas comes early enough to be first at something. Reuben Vaughan was that kind of man.
Born in Alabama in 1819, Vaughan made his way to Texas in 1852. Two years later, in 1854, he packed up his wife Margaret — she was a Truelove before she married him, and that name alone tells you something about the woman — and their three children, and they pushed out into what would become Palo Pinto County. No neighbors.
No town. No county yet, even. Just land.
They were the first permanent settlers in that place, full stop. They didn't wait around wondering what to do about shelter. Vaughan put up a cabin right near this very site, built of cedar and stone, two materials this part of Texas has never been short on.
Cedar and stone. That cabin wasn't asking permission from anybody. Vaughan worked the land as a farmer and stock raiser, and here's a detail the marker wants you to sit with — he maintained friendly relations with the Indian tribes that roamed this region.
Out on a raw frontier, that was not a small thing. That was a choice, made deliberately, and it held. Then the Civil War came, and Vaughan served in a frontier battalion.
Not away on some distant field — right here, protecting pioneer settlements. The frontier still needed guardin', and he was the kind of man who understood that. Reuben Vaughan lived until 1900.
And when he died, they laid him to rest in the family cemetery right here. The first man in the county, buried in the county he helped begin. Some stories don't need embellishing.
They just need telling.
What the marker says
Alabama-born Reuben Vaughan (1819-1900) migrated to Texas in 1852. He and his wife Margaret (Truelove) and their three children moved to this area in 1854 and became the first permanent settlers in present Palo Pinto County. They erected a cabin of cedar and stone near this site. A farmer and stock raiser, Vaughan maintained friendly relations with the Indian tribes that roamed this region. During the Civil War, he served in a frontier battalion to protect pioneer settlements. Vaughan is buried in this family cemetery. (1979)