He’d Strip Off His Clothes And Run Naked Down The Streets Of Nashville

One summer I went with my family to Nashville, Tennessee to visit relatives. We were talking about the family history when I asked about my great grandfather Creed Vaughan. My Aunt Dot said, “He was crazy as a Betsy Bug. He’d strip off his clothes and run naked down the streets of Nashville” Of course I was shocked by this and wondered what would make him do it. No one in the family seemed to know. They did believe that he was eventually  institutionalized in Nashville. With my grandmother dead, I couldn’t ask her about her father.

I filed this away in my memory and would not think about it till years later when I was working on the family genealogy. In researching Creed I found that he was born 19 March 1859 in Kentucky (possibly Washington Co.).  He was living in Cave City, Kentucky in 1870. After the death of his father in Jan. 1870  He bounced between 2 of his brothers Thomas Marshall Vaughan and Morgan Vaughan. He’s listed in the 1880 census as residing in Horse Cave, Hart Co., Kentucky with his brother Thomas and also the same census shows him living with his brother Morgan in Hardison, Logan Co., Kentucky. By 1900 he was married to Martha Clyde Walker with 3 daughters. When the census was taken in 1910 he was widowed with 5 daughters. They were Norma (my grandmother), Nell, Verna, Logan, and Dorsa Lee. My grandmother Norma was born Skilesville, Kentucky, which was next door to Rochester, Kentucky. Skilesville eventually vanished underwater when the lock and dam number 3 was built. I’m not sure when the family moved to the house in Rochester, but it is in Rochester that the story of Creed Vaughan gets interesting.

For years I was in contact with a Rochester resident by the name of Esther Barr. Mrs. Barr was a native of Rochester and eventually came to live in the house where my grandmother lived at one time. She remembered my grandmother coming by to look at the house. Mrs. Barr let her look around and she remembered my grandmother going into a room and saying that “This little room is where I slept.”  Mrs. Barr also told me that everyone in town knew Mr. Vaughan and knew that he wasn’t quite right after his stroke. Apparently one day in was sitting in the window of his house (no screens) when a pregnant lady came walking by the house. He jumped out of the window at her and caused her to go into labor!  Definitely there wasn’t something” quite right” with Mr. Vaughan.

My grandmother was the oldest child, living in Nashville, Tennessee, and married at the time of her father’s death. From all accounts my grandmother took care of her father as he aged.  He died on 3 August 1915 at the age of 56. He died at Central State Hospital (insane asylum), Nashville, Tennessee. The cause of death was listed as exhaustion. I guess running through the streets of Nashville naked took its toll on him.