Santa Barbara County Biographies

CHARLES SWIFT 

Submitted by Peggy Hooper

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


Source:
History of Santa Barbara, San Luis Obispo and Ventura Counties, California  - by 
C.M. Gidney, Benjamin Brooks, Edwin M. Sheridan, Vol I, II.  -Lewis Publ. Co., 
Chicago, 1917.


SWIFT BROTHERS.� W. U. and Charles Swift, who own adjoining 
ranches in the eastern part of the Montecito Valley, were both born at Lyons. 
Wayne County, New York. Their father had passed many years as a prominent hotel- 
keeper in New York, Illinois, and later at Virginia City, Nevada; and in June, 1868, 
he came to Santa Barbara and purchased a ranch of 333 acres in the Montecito Valley. 
This part of the country was then sparsely settled, and scarcely a fence was to be seen in 
the valley. But by industry and perseverance the ranch now stands out prominently as one 
of the best in the valley for agricultural purposes. Since the father's death in 1880, the 
ranch has been divided, and the sons now own about 100 acres. They carry on general 
farming and devote a considerable acreage to beans. They are jointly interested in the oil 
wells which are now being developed near their ranch, in the Santa Ynez Mountains, a 
stock company carrying on the developments. They also have mining interests at Fort 
Tejon, in the Santa Anita Mountains. 

W. D. Swift, being unmarried, supplies a home for his mother, who is now seventy-six 
years of age. Charles Swift was married in Montecito in 1875, to Miss Laura Pettit, and 
they have two children.