Tulare County Biographies

William Swan

Transcribed by Kathy Sedler

This file is part of the California Genealogy & History Archives
http://www.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~cagha/index.htm

 
A son of Frederick and Sarah (Butler) Swan, William Swan was born in Kent, 
England, November 7, 1849, and was two years and a half old when he was brought 
to the United States by his mother, his father having preceded him in 1850. The 
family lived in Indiana until 1858, then settled in Decatur county, Iowa, where 
Frederick Swan bought one hundred and sixty acres of government land at $1.25 an 
acre, which he improved and on which he lived out his days, dying in 1893, aged 
eighty-four years. Mrs. Swan died in 1900.
In Iowa, William Swan learned farming and worked at it until 1875, when he came 
to Tulare county. He went up into the mountains in the neighborhood of Sequoia 
lake and worked in the timbers and later tended sheep for a while in Kings River 
at Reedley. Then he came to the valley. Those were pioneer days in a new, wild 
country, and he had often to cope with bears foraging for food and saw at 
different times as many as a thousand antelope. His first holding in the valley 
was two hundred and forty acres of railroad land. Later he bought six hundred 
and forty acres of other land and acquired a half interest in oak timber land in 
the mountains. He sold forty acres of land in small tracts, by judicious 
subdivision. He has now ten acres of fruit bearing land. Around his house are a 
number of large trees and he owns the biggest orange tree in Tulare county.
The woman who became Mr. Swan's wife was Mary Smith, a native of Kansas, who had 
taken up her residence in California. Their children who are living are: Bertha 
J.; Wesley W.; Gertrude; and Wilma E., at home. Bertha J. married J. W. Smith, a 
native son of California. The Swan family is a family of Democrats and Mr. Swan 
has served his fellow townsmen as school trustee, in which office his 
son-in-law, J. W. Smith, is serving at this time. Mr. Swan and Mr. Smith are 
enterprising and public spirited, ready at all times to do their utmost for the 
general good.
 
History of Tulare and Kings Counties, California with Biographical Sketches - 
Los Angeles, Calif., Historic Record Company, 1913, Pp 859