THE SWAPP FAMILY
Compiled by Lettie Y. Swapp, Swapp Historian (1936)

The history of the Swapp Family in America extends over a period of 140 years, and begins with the birth of William Swapp, who was born in 1795 in Glasgow, Scotland. He emigrated to Montreal or "Lower Canada."

He was Captain of sailing vessels of the sea, and, being a seafaring man, he moved closer to the sea coast and lived for a while in New York State and Massachusetts. He married Nancy Hill of Ireland, who must have emigrated with him to Canada and to them was born one son, William Swapp, August 20, 1820 in Montreal or Toronto, Canada. Nancy Hill Swapp died in the year 1825 and left her son William, five years of age. It was at this time that the family tradition claims that the elder William Swapp, being left a widower with a small son, placed him in the care of another family, the love of the sea calling him on, and moved closer to the sea coast. It was here he met Almira Leach of Thompson, Connecticut. They were married about 1834 and to them was born William in 1835, Bradford born 1841, Sarah born 1854. There is no further record of this branch of the family, only what is written in a letter by William H. Swapp June 28, 1871 from St. Johns, New Brunswick to his half-brother William Swapp at St. George, Utah. It is in answer to a letter which he received on arrival in Boston Harbor from an ocean voyage to Calcutta, India, a port that took the vessel one year to complete the round trip. After unloading the cargo and getting the ship ready for another voyage, he had gone as far as New Brunswick before he answered the letter. His wife and family were with him and were to stay in England while he made the trip on to India to be back the following year in May or June. It is finding this letter and the information it contains that may lead the genealogist of the family organization to yet find some family names in the cities of Providence, Rhode Island, Thompson, Connecticut, or Newbrimfort (possibly Rhode Island), the birthplaces of the family of this William H. Swap, as he signs his name. A copy of the letter is now on file with this record and the original is very valuable to the older descendants of William Swapp, the ancestor of this family organization. We will give a brief history of the ancestors of Elizabeth Hill Swapp, who married William Swapp.

Elizabeth Hill was born in Renfrew, Scotland November 17, 1818 and emigrated to America when she was a mere child of three. Her grandfather and mother were Daniel and Mary Hill. Her father Alexander Hill was born in October 1779 in Skipness, Scotland. Her mother was Elizabeth Curry, born in 1775 and who married Alexander Hill June 1806 in Johnston, Renfrew, Scotland.

Alexander Hill was captain of vessels, a very independent man and as stable as the "Rock of Gibraltar." He was in battles on the sea and fought in the Battle of the Nile in 1797 and in the Battle of Trafalgar, Spain October 21, 1805. Of this battle, the song was written, "The boy Stood on the Burning Deck" which traveled many times around the world. At one time, Alexander brought home to his wife a pound of tea, the first she had ever seen. She prepared it for lunch by stewing it for greens. It was at the Battle of Trafalgar, Spain that Alexander Hill was wounded in the knee from grapeshot. He never fully recovered from the injury as he was always lame.

In 1821, with his entire family, he emigrated to America and settled in Lanark, Canada. He lived there twelve years. There were some seven children in the family, Elizabeth being the youngest. Some of the glorious qualities of his character were "a typical Scotchman," immovable and unswerving and his honesty unquestioned, his quality all gold, his devotion to God unsurpassed. He was temperate and not a spendthrift. He endured the hardships of the early pioneers and with his family came to Utah, where he died May 16, 1867. His wife Elizabeth died 1855 in Salt Lake. Her character was one of service and she was loved by all who knew her. The glorious qualities of this noble couple are handed down to the posterity of the law-abiding citizens through her daughter, Elizabeth, who married William Swapp in Nauvoo, Illinois in 1845. Mixed with the sterling qualities of this man of Scotch-Irish descent go to make up the class of descendants who now bear claim to the name of Swapp as their heritage.

In the year 1840, there were thirty members of the Hill Family at Toronto, Canada, and on April 12th, the entire family was baptized members of the Latter-Day Saint Church, an event unprecedented in Church history. They were converted through the teachings of Parley P. Pratt and Samual Lake. They sold all their lands at a very great sacrifice, and in almost dire need and poverty, with teams and covered wagons, left the British possessions of Canada and started for Nauvoo, in Hancock County, Illinois, where there were a number of LDS Saints. They arrived at this place on September 30, 1842.

The Winter of 1842-43 was very, very severe in western Illinois. Money was very scarce, and because of this, Alexander Hill and his wife Elizabeth all lived together in a very small board shanty, regardless of the severe cold. The men folks hauled logs and brick to help build the Nauvoo Temple and stones for the Nauvoo House. It was here and at this time that Elizabeth Hill, age 27, met and married William Swapp.

Not much is known of the early life of William Swapp or of his emigration from Canada to the United States. It could be presumed he also heard and accepted the gospel through the same missionaries as the Hill families, Elders Parley P. Pratt and Samual Lake. After their marriage, William and Elizabeth Swapp suffered some of the great hardships and persecutions heaped upon the Mormon Saints during those early days of the Church, especially at Winter Quarters, Iowa, where Elizabeth and William Swapp moved with a large number of Saints in the Spring of 1846. They had been sealed by President Brigham Young in the Nauvoo Temple.

Many companies were being organized from this place preparatory to their long journey to the far distant west under the leadership of Brigham Young. It was a great blow to the faithful Latter-day Saints when the Prophet was martyred together with his brother Hyrum. The mobs were furious, and the Saints were staunch in the defense of their families and beliefs.

Money was very scarce, and members of the Hill Family, Archie and John Hill, James W. Huntsmen, Joseph W. Phelps, and others were expert harvesters and could cut and bind many acres of grain in a day. In fact, one recorder in the family history states a fact of some of them harvesting or cutting about five acres a day with the old hand cradle. This crew of men went one day to help harvest the wheat in a neighborhood farm working all day on Friday and until Saturday morning, when a large group of women was passed by. John Richards said, "They are not women. Hear the clanking of their boots." Many more appeared and surrounded the wheat field, thus hemming in the workers in the field until there was no possibility of escape. James W. Huntsman secured a white handkerchief and went out to meet the ruffians, waving it as a signal of peace. Soon the command "Halt" rang out from the leader who told Huntsman, "You'll soon find out what they'd do to him" in answer to his question. They marched the captives to the home of Rice, and a consultation was held. Six or eight men from the mob were chosen and sent to the woods nearby, returning shortly with from one to six large hickory gads or ships. These brave Mormon men were each forced to kneel in a ditch or bend over a log fence with their back bare of clothing and receive the terrible lashes wielded with both hands of the executioner and the hickory stick. They each received twenty lashes, and then the eight bleeding men were ordered to get into their two carriages. With curses and blasphemies hissing from the mouths of the mob as poison from the tongues of vile serpents, they were ordered on their way to Nauvoo and to not look back. Their guns and ammunition had been seized and four of them smashed to pieces on the stump of a tree. So when about fifty yards distant from the mob a shot whizzed by, these brave and noble men were glad to get away with their lives. Recording this incident in this history reminds one it is for the purpose of letting the descendants of these noble men and women who gave almost all their earthly possessions and some their lives know the hardships these Latter-day Saints went through during the Summer of 1846.

In making their hasty retreat from Nauvoo, many valuable possessions had to be left behind, even provisions and clothing and hunger. Many frail and delicate women died in childbearing, those recovering having little of the comforts of life heaped near them. It was at this time that the starving Saints were blessed by an unseen hand of Providence when hundreds of plump, fat quail flew from the adjoining woods about the wagons near the tent doors of these refugees, trapped or caught by hand, no firearms being needed for their capture. It was a miracle to the Saints and a testimony of the living truth they had embraced and saved them from destruction.

It was September 10, 1846 that the infant child, Nancy, daughter of Elizabeth and William, died and was buried by the wayside beside many others of the same age. It was also that same winter when Isabel Hill, wife of Archibald Hill, Elizabeth Hill's youngest brother, took desperately ill and died in March 1847, leaving three small children. Hannah was given to Elizabeth and William Swapp to care for, riding in their wagon and helping her aunt with what duties she could. The encampment of the Saints at Winter Quarters, now known as Florence, comprised a goodly portion of the family relations of William and Elizabeth. Many of the companies that made up that wonderful band of Mormon pioneers were formed at Winter Quarters. Through the combined workings of one Thomas H. Benton and Stephen A. Dongles, all the Saints were compelled to vacate their lands and farms and move westward during the Winter, Spring and Summer of 1848.

A company of one thousand wagons and teams serving as a vanguard had already gone to the Rocky Mountains in the Spring of 1847 under the leadership of Brigham Young. William and Elizabeth Swapp traveled with her father's family under the command of John G. Smith, Captain of the one hundred and fifty teams and covered wagons. It would be well to mention the fact that Elizabeth Hill Swapp was present at the memorable meeting in Nauvoo, Illinois 1844 when the "mantle and mouthpiece" of the martyred Prophet Smith is said to have fallen upon President Brigham Young.

The William Swapp Family had lived at Honey Creek, Pottawattamie County, Iowa for some time, and along with other members of the traveling Saints and relatives, commenced farming on lands supposedly belonging to Pottawattamie Indians. This town of Honey Creek was about twelve miles distant from Kanesville, named in honor of Colonel Thomas L. Kane. (Kane County, Utah was named after the same man.) He was a broad-minded, big-souled friend of the Mormons. The name of Kanesville was later changed to Council Bluffs. It was at this time and place on June 17, 1849 that William and Elizabeth H. Swapp were blessed with their first son, William Hill Swapp, who later in life in Utah married Mary A. Spencer, daughter of George Spencer.

Through this couple, a large percent of the Swapp descendants have come. As before stated, the Swapp Family traveled in company with the Hill families under Captain John G. Smith. They were in the second division with Abraham Day as acting captain. They left Kanesville about the first of May, 1851. After traveling for six weeks over numerous sand hills, sloughs, and creeks which, at that time of the year were heavily swollen with the Spring's high waters, they had to be forded on sage brush and grass piled high in the bottoms to make a suitable crossing for the wagons. The Abraham Day / John Smith Company barely escaped the attack of the Pacree Indians who entered one of the camps near Laramie and plundered the travelers of between $100 and $1,000, also a lot of blankets, greens, camp utensils, provisions, and a valuable horse. When the Abraham Day Company reached the "Platte Bottoms" on the Platte River, Nebraska, a halt was called to herald the birth of another son to William and Elizabeth Swapp, June 25, 1851. They named the baby Archibald. To herald the birth of sons and daughters under these circumstances must have been a great trial to these wonderful ancestors of ours, the "Mormon Pioneers," most of whom had only ox teams, the slowest mode of travel compared with the high-powered cars driven today.

Many incidents of hardship and trials and some happiness were endured along the way. Elizabeth A. Richards, a young lady of sixteen years, had come to the wagon of her aunt Elizabeth Swapp to help in the coming event and help take care of the young child William H. It must have been somewhere about this time that the event happened that William would relate. He remembered that when the companies were stopped for encampment, that his mother would tie him securely to the end of a stout string or cord and tie the other end to the wagon wheel to thus avoid his straying away among the other wagons. He was three years old at this time, but always remembered it very perfectly. The journey slowly went on toward the west and on the 9^th of September, 1851, arrived in Salt Lake City.

Elizabeth Swapp frequently assumed the role of a man in walking and driving the ox team and in cooking on the campfire made of buffalo chips. After the long, tedious journey was at an end, a journey of a thousand miles over trackless plains and of more than three months' duration, the Swapp Family decided to settle at Mill Creek, which seemed to be a favorite spot for the Hill and other Scotch families. Here they located on some farmland and went through many privations in trying to help build up their location on Mill Creek. The family lived here for some time, then moved into Salt Lake City where their fourth and fifth children were born. James Hill Swapp being born June 10, 1853, who in later life married Margaret Brinkerhoff to whom were born twelve children. John Addison Swapp was born May 4, 1855. He married Martha Cameron when he was almost 19 years of age.

During this period of time when the Swapp Family lived in Mill Creek and vicinity, the great Johnson Army was being assembled in preparation for their entrance into the Salt Lake Valley. The Government had assembled about one-third of the nation's army and material and nearly all the best troops at a cost of fifteen million dollars. They had come to subdue the peaceful inhabitants of the valleys of wonderful Utah after 16 years in Utah, supposedly to "wipe the Mormons off the face of the Earth." The army invasion proved a failure, yet a blessing in disguise to the poverty stricken Saints, who now numbered some thirty thousand and more. With the retreat of the army, over four million dollars worth of cattle, horses, wagons, farm machinery, provisions, harnesses, blankets, and many other articles were sold, bartered, or given away for the sum of one hundred thousand dollars. Thus distributed throughout the families of the needy Saints large amounts of supplies and clothing that could be bought cheaper than on the Missouri River. The prophecy of Brigham Young was fulfilled that some things would sometimes be cheaper in Uag Valley (or Deseret) than in St. Louis. No doubt some of this beneficial material must have drifted in to the home of William and Elizabeth Swapp, who had been living in and near Salt Lake City.

During the exodus out of Salt Lake to Utah Valley southward, the Swapp Family had gone as far as Springville, and two days after the entrance of Johnson's Army into the deserted "City of the Saints," Salt Lake, this day being a clear, bright Sabbath that reflected the distant view of the "valley that had blossomed as the rose" back to the army as it made a halt five miles distant at the mouth of Emigration Canyon. As they paused in wonder at the view that lay before them, no thought of the havoc and sorrow of the retreating Saints, except that to subdue them by war, perhaps entered their minds. Thus it was under these trying circumstances in the town of Springville, Utah County, June 28, 1858, that the sixth child of William and Elizabeth was born.

They named this child Melvin, the same having on this date, 1936, his family's location in Luna, New Mexico. Melvin's good wife is Margaret Mortenson Swapp. She acted as midwife and nurse for twenty-five years. There is very little information on hand that may be recorded of the Swapp's family history before the general move south to the "Dixie" and "Muddy" Missions. In the year 1861, the family was again living in Mill Creek, and here April 12, 1861, the seventh child, Alexander was born to this sturdy pioneer Scotch family. Anything that may be written, remembered, or talked about of the circumstances and hardships of the Saints at this time, ten years after the Swapp Family, with hundreds of other families, had put down their weary feet on the "Mill Creek Flats," thus ending their weary journey from its far away beginning in Scotland, thence to Canada, then to the United States to Illinois, through Iowa and Nebraska, and on and on west to Utah.

When the President of the Church, Brigham Young, together with other presiding authorities, decided to extend the borders of colonization of the wards of Zion still further southward, the William Swapp Family accepted the call to go to Southern Utah and help "colonize Dixie." In the Spring of 1861, they located in the dry, barren valley of St. George, very much indeed a different location than the present beautiful city of St. George of today, where even tropical trees and plants now grow and bloom in abundance. It was perhaps through the untiring efforts and hard work of these first settlers of the valley that was the beginning of "Utah's Dixie." Under the leadership of Erastus Snow, the Swapp Family endured with courage and small complaints severe hunger and heavy hardships peculiar to building up a dry, barren country. Their main food supply being carrot tops and lucerne greens, occasionally some buckwheat cakes. A little meat and sorghum was obtained to change the menu of their meals, yet under these circumstances, the Saints seemed to prosper. Canals had been built through the dry sands and black volcanic rock. Good homes were completed, some of which still stand and are now owned by the prosperous descendants of these first colonizers of Utah's Dixie. Fruit trees of all kinds and vineyards were planted, and, in general, a wave of prosperity had commenced to be felt among the thrifty Saints. After two years trials and more, prosperous days began to be felt. William and Elizabeth were again bowed down in sorrow by the death of their small son Alexander, who died November 15, 1863 and was buried in the St. George Cemetery.

William Swapp was at this time a man of forty-seven years. Strong and sturdy as his Scotch ancestors, his wife Elizabeth was also a well preserved woman, despite the years of pioneer hardships. Their sons also were likewise well built, well honored sons of pioneer life. William, Archibald and James now being old enough to get employment carrying the U.S. mail, farming, and assisting in helping subdue the hostile Indian tribes of that locality. In the Spring of 1868, eight years after the call to go to Dixie, came another call to the "Muddy Mission" to colonize the Muddy River in Nevada. In some circumstances, it was a difficult matter for the Saints to leave their possessions again and travel on under the leader's call. Yet with faith, they accepted the call and among those going from Dixie was the William Swapp Family, consisting of his wife and five sturdy sons, the oldest three now being 19, 17, and 15 years of age respectively and could be of great service to their father's family. This move to the Muddy River settlement had been the fifth time the family of William Swapp had accepted the call to a new location and had by now become expert in quickly adjusting themselves to the new location. Owing to the intense heat, high taxes, and the hatred of the hostile Indians of this section of Nevada, the colonizers of the Church were released from their labors of the "Muddy Mission" in the Spring of 1871. The advice from the authorities of the Church was for these families to locate elsewhere in Southern Utah, especially on the Kanab and Long Valley Creeks in Kane County.

The Long Valley Creek was one branch of the Rio Virgin River of Southern Utah and it was to the small town of Berrysville that the Swapp Family now moved, where the family lived in tents and covered wagons until log cabins could be built. The name of this town was later changed to Glendale, possibly for its position in the sheltered nook in the mountains and the clear stream nearby, bordered on its banks by large trees and climbing wild vegetation. Elizabeth Swapp had been a Relief Society worker in the City of Nauvoo and continued to work in this organization in whatever town she lived, being chosen and elected, and she served as the third Relief Society President in the Glendale Ward.