Archives West Finding Aid

Warren N. Vaughn (1823-1907) was a Oregon pioneer who settled in Tillamook, Oregon, and served as county treasurer, county commissioner, sheriff, and assessor.

"Born in Stuben County, New York, in 1823, Warren Nicholas Vaughn first heard about Tillamook, Oregon Territory, in the fall of 1851 from a friend who encouraged him to settle there."

After 1852, "Vaughn settled into the Tillamook area, holding Land Claim number 4220. He was a farmer and a cooper and made all the barrels in the area that butter and fish were shipped in."

"Vaughn became active in local and county government, serving as county treasurer, county commissioner, sheriff, and assessor. In 1854, when Tillamook settlers decided they needed a reliable way to get supplies and to transport their dairy products to markets in Portland and Astoria, Vaughn was instrumental in building The Morning Star, the first ship registered in Oregon. The ship's maiden voyage was on January 5, 1855.

Vaughn married fourteen-year-old Harriet Trask in 1858, the first couple to be married on Tillamook Bay. It was a civil ceremony; there would be no religious presence in the area for another eight years. Harriet was the daughter of Elbridge and Hannah Trask, who had taken up a homestead of 640 acres along the river that now bears the family's name.

Over the next twenty-six years, the Vaughns had fifteen children: Ida, Delia, Amos, Lydia, Alice, Cecelia, Anna, Clara, Warren B., Guy, Charles, Harriet, George, Lena and Myrtle. Idaville, Oregon, a few miles north of Tillamook, is named for Ida Vaughn.

Warren Vaughn died in 1907 at the age of eighty-three; Harriet Vaughn died in 1912 at the age of seventy. Warren Vaughn is credited with having written the first history of Tillamook. His diary, "The Early History of Tillamook," was edited and republished in 2004 as Till Broad Daylight."

[Source: oregonencyclopedia.org]