Oakland Plantation

This house was built in 1823 by Dr. Thomas Collins Austin (1790-1883), physician and planter. Austin attended the Medical University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia, and practiced medicine here for sixty years. His office, just north of the house, was demolished in 1953. Austin and his wife Mary Turner James (1805-1889) raised eleven children here.

In 1897 the Austin family sold the house and 550 acres to Thomas Martin Vaughan (1865-1939). Vaughan, a farmer, married Ida Tyson Vaughan (1875-1952) the next year. They raised eleven children here, just as the Austins had. Their daughter Lucille Jessie Vaughan Rice (1912-2006), the last family member to live here, sold the house to the YMCA of Greenville in 2004.