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.

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.

The family were liberals who attended the Presbyterian, later Unitarian, Gravel Pit Chapel, Hackney, where the dissenting minister and political radical Richard Price preached.

[2] 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.

[3] He remained a close friend of the Portuguese botanist and geologist José Francisco Correia da Serra, who lived in Philadelphia from 1812 and 1820 and who served for the latter half of this time as ambassador to the United States from Portugal.