James

The Vaught Cemetery is located just off Hwy 71, north of Mountainburg where you turn to go to Lake Shepherd Springs.
The Cemetery was named for Caswell Vaught, who gave the land for the Old Vaught Cemetery. In 1955, when the city of Fort Smith was getting ready to build Lake Shepherd Springs, trustees of the Vaught Cemetery asked the city to move all the graves in the valley which included those in Vaught Cemetery, the Jack Shepherd Cemetery and three isolated graves. A law suit was involved. Fort Smith purchased a 1.7 acre tract of land and hired the McConnell Funeral Home to remove 489 bodies. Nine of these bodies were removed to the Conley Cemetery and the rest were put in the land purchased by the city. The first person buried in the Old Vaught Cemetery was an old Cherokee Indian by the name of Joe Muhlkey, who was living on the land when Caswell Vaught homesteaded it; he requested that he be buried under some ancient cedar trees near Frog Bayou Creek. The last person buried there was Jim Vaught in 1953.

I have a listing of the persons whose grave was removed from the Old Vaught Cemetery to the Vaught Cemetery and to the Conley Cemetery.

Joe