The Wright-Vaughan House
Mt. Vernon, Franklin County, Texas
Marker Inscription
Residence of Mt. Vernon's first physician, William C. Wright (1820-1890), a North Carolinian who married Mary Rutherford in Tennessee and moved here in 1850. About 1870, Dr. Wright built this house, making earlier home into hospital. (It was so used until 1945.) Dr. and Mrs. Wright gave (1889) this house to youngest daughter, Jennie (Mrs. Charles) Vaughan, whose daughter Jessie lived here until 1971. Bought 1972 and restored by Ruth Elliott Monden. Recorded Texas Historic Landmark - 1974
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
Dr. William C. Wright, a North Carolinian who came to Mt. Vernon in 1850, was the town's first physician, and around 1870 he built this house, converting his earlier home into a hospital that served the community into the mid-20th century. The family passed the home down through daughters and granddaughters before it was purchased and restored in the 1970s. It preserves the memory of frontier medicine in a small East Texas town.
Why it matters
The home of a town's first doctor speaks to how essential — and improvised — medical care was in the settlements of 19th-century America.
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Related people
- · William C. Wright
- · Mary Rutherford Wright
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
Franklin County Courthouse
Mt. Vernon, TX
Mt. Vernon was platted in 1849 and chosen county seat when Franklin County was created in 1875, progressing from a wooden courthouse to a brick one by 1878. A fight over financing a new courthouse without a public vote climbed all the way to the Texas Supreme Court, which in 1911 upheld the county's method — and within days commissioners awarded the contract for this building, completed in 1912.
First Baptist Church of Mount Vernon
Mt. Vernon, TX
Organized on October 5, 1849, under the Baptist missionary William M. Pickett, this congregation first gathered in a log building east of what is now the Franklin County Courthouse, only a year after the Mount Vernon post office opened. Originally called New Liberty, it took the name Mount Vernon Baptist Church in 1870. Its early roll included the Rev. Joshua F. Johnson, who would sit as a delegate at the 1861 Secession Convention in Austin.
Joshua Foster Johnson
Mt. Vernon, TX
Arriving from Tennessee in 1845, Joshua Foster Johnson settled near the future Mount Vernon and helped found the town—first called Keith—in 1848. In the Third Texas Legislature he sponsored the bill establishing the Mount Vernon Male and Female Academies, an early step toward public schooling, and he sat in both the 1861 Secession Convention and the 1875 Constitutional Convention. A Baptist pastor as well, he helped organize the Mount Vernon Baptist Church.
First United Methodist Church of Mount Vernon
Mount Vernon, TX
This Methodist congregation organized in 1855 with thirteen charter members, first meeting in Joe Wylie Parchman's home south of town, then in a Masonic hall, before buying this site and building a meetinghouse in 1875. Successively larger buildings followed—a frame church in 1896–97, the present edifice in 1930, and an education building in 1953. Over its long life the church has sent at least four of its own men into the ministry.