The James D. Vaughan museum honors the life history of the father of southern gospel music.  

         One bit of information that may surprise you is that James D. Vaughan "the father of southern gospel music" that made Lawrenceburg famous for being the birthplace of southern gospel was actually born in Giles county in December of 1864. The civil war was still going on and it took years to get back to normal in the south. Vaughan would hear and grow to love gospel music and attended a signing school in his teen years and later taught classes himself. He was interested in "shape note" music and started a singing group with his brothers to show their musical singing skills.

Vaughan moved to Texas soon after getting married to further his music career and attended a singing school directed by Ephraim Hilderbrand who encouraged Vaughan to try his hand at writing his own songs.

         Vaughan took right to writing and was soon publishing his own songs but unfortunately a tornado hit the Vaughan's town so they moved back to Giles county. While back home Vaughan became the principle of Elkmont Springs School. He never gave up on his music and in 1900 he published and volume of shaped note hymns called Gospel Chimes. In 1903 he started the James D. Vaughan Publishing Company in Lawrenceburg and soon began selling music hymnals. Vaughan was a revolutionary when he payed professional singers to go out as a quartets and sing his songs from his hymnals. His style of professional quartets soon had a new Ford automobile so they could travel to different states for a singing. He soon had many quartets all selling his many hymnals.

         Vaughan was so successful that he started his own publication called the Vaughan Family Visitor that had a greater distribution than most popular music journals of the time. Most people know of our capitol city of Nashville as being music city but it was Vaughan that licensed WOAN radio in 1922 and broadcast gospel music and advertised his music publishing. Vaughan also had a record phonograph company but it and the radio station were eventually sold because of low success. In Vaughan's lifetime, he'd wrote over 500 songs and printed over 6 million gospel songbooks before his death in 1941.