[3] After gaining his freedom, he spent the latter part of his life in the United States and started the movement with his immediate family members in his final moments.
Several generations of Scipio's descendants are dispersed across three continents where they mostly live or lived,[4] except for occasional cousin reunions, which includes people from Nigeria, Sierra Leone, Liberia, Ghana and Tanzania in Africa; Jamaica and Barbados in the Caribbean; the United States and Canada in North America; and the United Kingdom in Europe.
Scipio was so skilled as an ironmonger that he established a reputation in the area as a talented artisan for his work in fashioning iron gates and fences.
[3] As a result of his exceptional gifts, his master Wiley Vaughan valued him so much that he granted him his freedom, his tools, and one hundred dollars as stated in his will after his death.
[3][2] It is most likely that Scipio was determined to reverse the effects of the transAtlantic slave trade, through some members of his immediate family by rebuilding their roots in Africa in order to restore some of their lost dignity, pride, wealth, power and security.
After missionaries were driven out of Abeokuta in 1867, he and other Christian refugees resettled in Lagos, where he built a successful hardware business and raised his family.
James also kept in touch with his relatives in America, who were also embroiled in their own separate struggles for survival, prosperity, and dignity in post-Civil War South Carolina and elsewhere.
Scipio Vaughan's descendants included several state legislators during the Reconstruction period, politicians, diplomats, entrepreneurs and a high proportion of teachers, doctors and lawyers, among other professionals.
Omoba Eric Olawolu Moore, a prominent Lagos lawyer and one-time member of the Nigerian Legislative Council who was educated in England at Monkton Combe School.
His wife Aduke Moore was legal counsel to Mobil Oil, West Africa, and later went to New York as a Nigerian delegate to the United Nations General Assembly.
Ayo Vaughan became a nursing administrator[14] and married a British architect, Alan Richards, with whom she had four children including the filmmaker Remi Vaughan-Richards.
From the daughters, who remained in the United States, the cousins have traced the eight main family lines - Barnes, Brevard, Bufford, Cauthen, McGriff, Peay, Truesdale and Vaughan.