Mary C. Vaughan

Mary C. Vaughan is a somewhat obscure American author whose surviving record is fragmentary, but she is clearly linked to reform circles in the nineteenth century. The strongest documented connection places her in the temperance and women's rights movement: the Collective Biographies of Women project identifies her as an activist and temperance worker, and notes that she helped found the Woman's New York State Temperance Society alongside Susan B. Anthony, with Elizabeth Cady Stanton named president.

She is best known in print as the coauthor of Woman's Work in the Civil War: A Record of Heroism, Patriotism, and Patience, published in 1867 with L. P. Brockett. That book set out to preserve stories of women who served, organized aid, nursed, and supported the war effort, making Vaughan part of one of the earliest substantial efforts to record women's contributions to the Civil War.

Library records also connect her name to later editions and related volumes, including Heroines of the Rebellion and Famous Women. Because so little biographical detail is firmly documented, Vaughan remains an intriguing figure: a writer and reform-minded collaborator whose books helped keep women's public work from being forgotten.