Alex Swan and the Swan Companies

by Lawrence M. Woods

Overview

The Swan name is inseparable from the history of Wyoming and the West, and when Swan made his mark in Wyoming in the 1880s, ranching was king. The largest among Alex Swan’s many corporate creations, The Swan Land and Cattle Company, Ltd., was one of the larger livestock companies to operate in the American West, and it survived long after it founder’s financial debacle in the great winter of 1886-1887. At one time, the Swan was said to be the largest private landowner in Wyoming, and at its peak it was certainly one of the largest sheep companies in the country.

This new work for the first time relates the life of Alex Swan, and offers a complete history of the Swan companies. Lawrence M. Woods has combed the surviving corporate records and other documents held in the United States and abroad.

At the height of his financial life, Swan was said to be the richest man in Wyoming Territory, and his influence extended beyond business affairs to community service, both in Wyoming and in Iowa. Yet, after his dramatic financial collapse, there were many who ridiculed what he had done, and Swan’s silence has left those criticisms on the record, without rebuttal.

Swan, a leader in the Wyoming Stock Growers Association from its founding in 1873, served as its second president. Promoting the use of Hereford cattle on the high plains, he was a force in the Wyoming ranching world, especially after his move to Cheyenne in 1874. Woods details Swan’s life in the years after his separation from the Scottish-controlled Swan Land and Cattle Company, especially his activities in Ogden, Utah.

The Swan companies continued operation into the mid-twentieth century. John Clay played a major role in their operation, and he figures prominently in their story. Alex Swan and the Swan Companies is an important portrait of the inner workings of the western cattle industry and its leaders.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780806154022
Publisher:	University of Oklahoma Press
Publication date:	01/25/2016
Series:	Western Lands and Waters Series , #22
Edition description:	Reprint
Pages:	300
Product dimensions:	6.10(w) x 9.20(h) x 0.90(d)

About the Author

Lawrence M. Woods, an attorney and certified public accountant, resides in Worland, Wyoming. He is the author of several books, including British Gentlemen in the Wild West and Alex Swan and the Swan Companies.

Read an Excerpt

Alex Swan and the Swan Companies

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By Lawrence M. Woods

UNIVERSITY OF OKLAHOMA PRESS

Copyright © 2006 Lawrence M. Woods
All rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-0-8061-5554-8

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CHAPTER 1

Alexander Hamilton Swan

AS A MATURE OLDER MAN, Alexander Hamilton Swan was six feet tall and gaunt, rather long of face and bearded, with fine piercing blue eyes and brown hair that was later gray. In what was perhaps an effort to give a complete description, he was also said to have been knock-kneed. His personality was strong, and his personal pride amounted to arrogance in the minds of some who knew him, although he was possessed of considerable charisma and power to persuade others to his view. The editor of the Indianola Herald said that except for one other man, Alex was "the best talker west of the Mississippi, and his jokes all have a 'moral' to them."

Alex Swan, the youngest son of Charles Swan and his wife, Margaret Barclay Swan, was born in 1831 in Carmichaels, a small town in Greene County, Pennsylvania, south of Pittsburgh, on Muddy Creek, a western tributary of the Monongahela River. The British ancestor of the family was one of the settlers in the Ulster Plantation, that troubled region in Northern Ireland, and had emigrated to the American colonies in the early part of the eighteenth century.

John Swan, grandfather of Charles, came to Pennsylvania from Loudoun County, Virginia, in 1767, perhaps in the belief that the area was a part of the Virginia colony. The Swans may have been involved in the later dispute with Pennsylvania over their slave holdings.

The southern boundary between Pennsylvania and Virginia was not surveyed for a number of years, and in those days before the boundary between the two colonies was precisely delimited, the governor and others in Virginia assumed that the western boundary of Pennsylvania would not extend west of the Monongahela River. Since Virginia claimed all the land west of Pennsylvania, wherever that might be, a Virginia county was erected in the western part of what ultimately was determined to be Pennsylvania. Virginia settlers began moving into this county as early as 1767, when Mason and Dixon were still trying to run their famous demarcation line, which later separated the North and South. The Swans' Vanmeter in-laws led a band of armed men who tried to prevent the running of the survey line, when it became apparent their land would be in Pennsylvania.

The Swans were some of the first settlers in this disputed district, which was a land covered by magnificent forests of oak, poplar, hickory, and other fine trees. While the western part of what would later be Greene County, Pennsylvania, was hilly, the land where the Swans settled around Muddy Creek was almost level, draining gently toward the Monongahela. Eight sons and five daughters were born to Charles and Margaret Swan in Greene County, of whom three would later come to Wyoming: Thomas R., Henry, and Alexander H.

One of Alex Swan's friends in Indianola, Iowa, later claimed that Alex was initially educated with an eye to entering the ministry, but if that had once been his plan, he made little effort to pursue it. He first married Annie McCullough in Pennsylvania, and their first child died in infancy, followed soon after by the mother. A childless widower at the age of 23, Alex went to Iowa to farm in 1853, bringing with him about $1,000 to invest. We do not know the source of this considerable nest egg.

Alex Swan's 1853 venture in Iowa was only the beginning of a long association with that state, which had been admitted to the Union only seven years earlier, in 1846. The state was a remarkably prime agricultural area, and it has been estimated that about a quarter of all the Grade I agricultural land in the United States is in Iowa. Nevertheless, Alex's first move to Iowa lasted for only a little over two years, during which time he located on some so- called "wild land," which could often be acquired on easy terms, and the land coul dbe improved and sold out at a profit.

Alex then left Iowa for Ohio, where his father and his brother Charles were then living. He bought a farm in Knox County near that of Charles, and worked it for seven years. In 1858, he returned to Pennsylvania, where he married Elizabeth Richey and brought her back to Ohio. Four years later the couple moved to Indianola, Iowa, in Warren County, south of Des Moines, where their son William R. was born in 1862, followed by daughter Louise two years later.

While Alex and his wife were starting their family in Iowa, the nation was embroiled in the Civil War, which touched so many young families. Charles Swan, who was sixteen years older than Alex, was in the Union Army during the war and was taken prisoner. Their cousin, Thomas J. Swan, also served in the army, but Alex seems not to have seen military service in that conflict. Of course, the 1863 draft law provided numerous possibilities for exemption, and even if none of those applied, the draftee could induce another to serve as his substitute or pay $300 cash to commute the service obligation.

Alex Swan undoubtedly dabbled in a number of occupations in those early years in Iowa, but after the war the Indianola newspaper listed Alex as a cattle dealer, although he was soon caught up in Iowa's intense railroad promotion schemes. In response to repeated requests from the Iowa congressional delegation, the federal government in 1856 had authorized land grants for four east–west railroads in Iowa, providing alternate sections six miles from the right of way. The first operating railroad in the state was the Mississippi and Missouri Rail Road, which connected to the Rock Island at Davenport, Iowa, and passed through Des Moines on its way west to Council Bluffs. Once the routes for the trunk lines had been determined, the counties without connections eagerly sought ways to obtain one, and the typical way to attract a railroad was to vote a tax subsidy in the area through which the line would pass.

The Mississippi and Missouri reached Des Moines in 1867. One of Alex Swan's first railroad ventures was the Des Moines, Indianola and Missouri Railroad company, which was organized in the spring of 1869 to build a line from Indianola to Des Moines, some twenty to twenty-five miles to the north. Although Alex was a shareholder and a director of the company, he was by no means the leading man in that promotion. The Rock Island railroad had agreed to lay track on the roadbed, once the grading was done, so Warren County set about to raise $60,000 to grade the line north as far as the Warren County line.

After the initial enthusiasm, work on the railroad went slowly. The survey team, which was to locate the line, did not take to the field until late in October, and when track laying began, the money soon ran out. The folks in Des Moines were perceived as dragging their feet on the project, and Warren County hoped to speed things up by opposing the appropriation for the new capitol until the railroad moved forward. The county's instrument for this strategy was to be Alex Swan, who was nominated to the lower house of the legislature on the Republican ticket in August 1869. Alex not only pledged to oppose the appropriation for a new capitol, but for good measure he also agreed to oppose "everything else that will in any financial way benefit Des Moines," unless the railroad to Indianola was quickly built.

Alex handily won the seat in the October election, but his efforts did not give much momentum to the stalled railroad project, although the presidency of the railroad did pass into the hands of George Griffith of Indianola, which may have given a greater measure of control to Warren County. The company still badly needed cash, and by the spring of 1871, the Indianola Journal was lecturing its readers on the need to pay up their taxes and subscriptions to the railroad project.

Optimistic predictions still called for the first trains to Indianola by June 10, but this date had to be moved more than once. Supposedly, the Rock Island did not provide enough rails for the line, but undoubtedly the main difficulty was the lack of money. In September 1871, the rails were still seven miles from Indianola, and only on October 19 was it possible to say that the rails had been laid into town. Des Moines hosted the first excursion party from Indianola before the end of the year, but enthusiasm was dampened by the fact that $20,000 was still owed to the contractor who built the line.

After the railroad was completed, there was plenty of backbiting over the delays and money shortages. George Griffith said that he had personally made a $5,000 loan to the company, and had also paid the cost of the bridge over the Middle River, for a total outlay of more than $11,000. When he asked the community to establish a pool of money to repay him, a chorus of abuse arose, and the Herald accused him of poorly managing the project. Griffith retorted that others in the company, including Alex Swan, knew that he was telling the truth about the finances.

Swan's chief occupation at this time was running a hardware store, where Albert Richey, Mrs. Swan's brother, also worked. Either the business was not particularly prosperous or his customers were slow in paying their accounts. A notice in the newspaper in the fall of 1870 said, "All knowing themselves indebted to the undersigned must call and settle." Then he added, "I need money and must have it. A. H. Swan." Perhaps the notice produced results, for the following month, when the Warren County Banking Association was organized with a capitalization of $50,000, Alex had the funds to become one of the shareholders and, more importantly, the standing in the community to be invited to do so.

The Warren County Bank commenced business at the beginning of December 1870, apparently for the purpose of taking over a private bank in Indianola, and Alex was soon elected as a director of the bank, a position he would hold until he left Iowa. Early in 1871 he was also secretary of the Warren County Agricultural Society, which managed the Warren County Fair. Thus, Alex was one of the business leaders of the community, but his standing in the political arena did not exempt him from the negative backlash from the railroad project. When he sought a second term in the legislature in the fall of 1871, the fickle electorate gave his seat to a local farmer by a margin of over 350 in a total vote of 1,300.

When the cashier of the Warren County Bank decided to leave the bank, Bert Richey was given that important job for a short time. Unfortunately for Bert, the former cashier soon returned and was given his old job again. In the spring of 1873, Alex opened a new a grocery store under the name A. H. Swan & Co., the "& Co." presumably referring to Bert; but Alex quietly exited from this business at the end of that year. Once again out of a job for the time being, Bert went to Chicago to look over prospects — one of the rare occasions when he did not follow Alex to a new venture.

Alex was now planning a more fundamental change in his business life, and he and his older brother Tom began scouting for suitable opportunities. Although the Indianola newspapers knew of these travels, few of the details reached the printed page. Alex later said that he had scouted the range-cattle country as early as 1870–71, and that after he saw the Wyoming range on the Chugwater and Sybille rivers, he began buying ranches there in 1872. This later recollection makes it sound as though Alex and Tom quickly decided to develop the Wyoming opportunities at an early date, but we have contemporary accounts that suggest a longer process of evaluation. We know that Alex was in southern Missouri in the spring of 1874, and also in the territories of the West and Southwest, while Tom was in southern Kansas.

We also know that when Alex went back to Denver in the summer of 1874, his friends in Indianola learned that he had bought 3,000 head of cattle and a ranch at the foot of Iron Mountain, some thirty miles northwest of Cheyenne. He told the Indianola Herald that he would only be at the ranch temporarily and would continue to make his permanent residence in Indianola. This was not to be, for early in September 1874, Alex took his family to Cheyenne to live.

CHAPTER 2

Wyoming Cattleman

WHEN HE CAME TO LIVE in Wyoming Territory in 1874, Alex Swan was already a mature man of 42 — older than many who went west to that new territory to find their fortunes. But his age did not dampen his enthusiasm for new, and sometimes dramatic, ventures.

Wyoming Territory was then in the midst of a transition. Before the territory was organized in 1869, the region had been a place travelers crossed in a hurry, on their way to some other, more desirable destination. In the years following the Louisiana Purchase and the later acquisition of Oregon, the area that would be Wyoming had always been a part of some other territory, attached to one or another when settlement justified the erection of new local governments. Only after the Union Pacific crossed the plains and towns sprang up along its line did it become necessary to give the Wyoming country its own territory and detach it from Dakota Territory.

At first, it was by no means clear what would be the defining economic activity for the residents of the new territory, many of whom lived in the towns along the railroad. Gold had already been discovered at South Pass, in the central part of the territory, and some thought their economic future lay with the mining industry. Unfortunately the South Pass gold rush had a short life. By the time the mining boom ended, one of the byproducts of building the transcontinental railroad was the discovery that beef could survive and grow fat on the seemingly barren land stretching endlessly along the tracks. The first large-scale cattle ranching was undertaken to feed the construction crews working on the roadbed, and after the line was in operation it offered the necessary transportation to move cattle to market. Alex Swan was drawn to Wyoming to make his fortune in this new industry.

For his first venture in the range-cattle business, Alex selected a range on the Chugwater and Sybille creeks and filed on a 160-acre homestead on Chugwater Creek, which gave him a fee land anchor for his ranch. Alex and his brother Tom borrowed the money to purchase 3,000 head on book count from Searight Brothers in 1873. Alex then asked his brother Tom (who also moved to Cheyenne in 1874) to join him in what became the Swan Brothers partnership. Swan Brothers bought 8,000 head of cattle from Searight Brothers in the spring of 1878, receiving a discount of about 7 percent from the book count. This was the beginning of the famous Two Bar Ranch, named for its brand.

Under the book-count system, which would later become a major problem for Alex Swan and his brother, the buyer accepted the seller's book entries as evidence of the number of cattle being purchased. The system was born of necessity, not choice, for these books were the only evidence for herds ranging freely over the public domain, where the grass was free. The rancher could not confine his cattle inside a fence long enough to count them.

Each ranch maintained supposedly careful records of the number of calves branded and the number of animals sold each year, which were the only two actual counts in the system. The calf-brand total was expected to be a proper ratio of the total herd according to a rule of thumb then in use, and the number of steers sold could be compared with half the calf brand in the year in which they were born. From this information and other knowledge of range conditions, prudent cattlemen calculated an estimated loss from storms, predators, and other causes, which was then deducted from the book count. As we shall see, some ranchers neglected to make a death-loss deduction, preferring instead to give the purchaser of the herd a discount off the book count totals, as was done in the case of the Searight purchase.

Obviously, the utility of such a system depended heavily on the integrity of the seller, but even the most scrupulously honest seller could be seriously in error in estimating how many steers had perished in a herd of 10,000 or 20,000. Moreover, then as now, there were those who were willing to exploit the weaknesses of the book-count system to their own advantage.

(Continues...)

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Excerpted from Alex Swan and the Swan Companies by Lawrence M. Woods. Copyright © 2006 Lawrence M. Woods. Excerpted by permission of UNIVERSITY OF OKLAHOMA PRESS.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.

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Table of Contents

Contents

Illustrations,
Introduction,
1. Alexander Hamilton Swan,
2. Wyoming Cattleman,
3. Alex Swan's Scottish Company,
4. At the Peak of his Powers,
5. The $10,000 Manager,
6. Early Signs of Trouble,
7. Frenetic 1886,
8. Collapse of the Swan Empire,
9. The Creditors Dismantle the Dreams,
10. Alex Swan in Utah,
11. The Swan Company Without Swan,
12. Reconstituted Management,
13. The First Years Under Clay,
14. The Last Years of the Cattle Business,
15. Clay Takes Control (Again),
16. The Post-War Years,
17. The Last Years of the Scottish Company,
18. The Delaware Company,
19. The Great Crisis,
20. The Post-Clay Era,
21. Liquidation at Last,
22. The "Little" Swan Company,
23. The Swan Legacy,
A. The Swan Shareholders' Investment,
B. Cattle Inventories,
C. Financial Information,
Bibliography,
Notes,
Index,