ss than a lifetime ago, Georgia was pretty much as it had been a hundred years before that. Fields of King Cotton flanked a seemingly endless network of dirt roads and much of the landscape was peppered with tenant farms and sharecropper shacks. Although the distance was only about 30 miles, Newton County seemed a long way from Atlanta.
This book deals with one segment of life in those earlier times. It is a story generally about the Vaughn and Thomason families and their backgrounds, but it focuses on Glenn and Sallie Vaughn, my parents. Some of the folks in those shacks were us.
The purpose here is a selfish one. It is to put down for my children and grandchildren what we know about our family background, warts and all. Perhaps because of this effort the more curious members of our younger generations will be helped in their family research.
It was curiosity that got me into this. Some years ago I decided to try my hand at family research and before long discovered there was a deep, dark secret back there somewhere. And, I have not been able to get to the bottom of it. The truth is we may not be Vaughns, we may be Winns.
The story goes that my great grandmother, originally Margaret Elizabeth Sutherland of Abbeville County, South Carolina, ran away in the middle of the night in 1886 with her five children, one a babe in arms, and, one James P. Vaughn. We just don't know the whole story. Maybe this book will help solve the mystery.
Mainly this is about two remarkable persons, Sallie Cleo Thomason and Glenn Vaughn who dealt unbelievably well with the many unusual twists and turns in their lives and hardships they encountered while raising 10 children.
Most remarkable is that neither of them would refer to any of their experiences as hardships. They were not ones to complain or blame someone else for their shortcomings. When something had to be done, no matter how difficult, they just did it. They were happy and thankful.
My five sisters, four brothers, five brothers-in-law, and four sisters-in-law, all, to some degree helped along the way. The in-laws deserve medals for putting up with hearing so many Vaughn stories told and retold over the years. Thanks to one and all. Special thanks go to several: To my sister Sallie Jeanette Knapp for the sketches she did; to nephews Stuart and Glenn Ozburn and Benjamin Lott for their sketches; to my son, Robert (Bobby) Vaughn for, among other things, working up the computer composite picture of Sallie and Glenn in a Modal T.
My apologies for the poor quality of so many of the pictures. There are almost no pictures of Sallie and Glenn in their young years and precious few when they were older.
Glenn Vaughn Jr., Columbus, GA
About the Author: Before launching a distinguished newspaper career, Glenn Vaughn Jr. grew up in a share-cropper family on cotton farms in north central Georgia, then joined the U.S. Marines for a two-year stint before enrolling in journalism studies at the University of Georgia where he rose to become editor of the student-operated newspaper, The Red and Black. As the oldest of 10 children, most of whom were kept busy plowing mules, hoeing and picking cotton, and numerous other farm chores, the author has drawn on that experience to provide a unique glimpse of life in rural Georgia before, during and after The Great Depression. The book traces what is known of the histories of Vaughn and Thomason families, primarily in two Georgia counties, Newton and Walton. At the focus is a mysterious family scandal that originated in Abbeville County South Carolina and was kept quiet for more than a hundred years. Glenn Vaughn Jr., worked on newspapers in Albany, Atlanta and Athens before working up through the ranks of the Columbus (GA) Ledger-Enquirer, a Knight Ridder newspaper, to become president and publisher before retiring as chairman of the board. He serves on the Board of AFLAC, Inc.
