Who Was George B. Swift?

You'll have to read the book to get the whole story, but here's the backstory:

 Writing a biography of a family member is a thought-provoking exercise especially if the subject in question was a part of history, as George Bell Swift was. I find myself wanting to know everything and feeling frustrated that I never will. I find myself questioning why leave one thing in and take another out. As virtually everyone in this family knows, editing is the heart and soul of writing, so by keeping everything in, the story as it were becomes incoherent. Facts don’t add up to the truth. It’s how you order them and how you shape them. But what is the truth? What do we want or need to know about George B? I find it amusing for example, that this man, one half of the first Republican political machine in Chicago, refused to serve alcohol at the dinner table, according to family lore. Because he was a deacon first, and a politician last. 

Not according to the Chicago Times however, who had this to write, during the thick of the third mayoral contest of 1893:

Chicago Times, November 14, 1893, Editorial Page

Deacon Swift

Mr. Swift stands in horror and amaze. An afternoon journal upon the eve of the holy Sabbath day announced that at the mayor’s own house after sundown upon the Sabbath there would be a gathering of publican aldermen and republican party leaders at the home of George (St.) Bartholomew Swift.

Time out of mind Mr. Swift as a republican politician has hailed with joy the accusation that he was a partisan of partisans. He gloried in his activity as a politician. Democracy might call it pernicious, and the more democracy thus described his conduct the more Swift was delighted with himself.

But Swift is not only a politician, he is also a deacon, and when this fearful announcement came that he, the deacon, would gather at his home in the palm of the Sunday a howling lot of partisan politicians then burst forth his manly indignation and he exclaimed to the organ which is now crying out Swift or destruction, Swift or the demotion bowwows: “The statement that I was to hold a political conference at my home was maliciously false. To think that I would hold a conference of thirty-eight aldermen on Sunday, and at my own home at that?”

To meet thirty-eight aldermen under any circumstances is something which would appall the average citizen, but to meet them on the Sabbath, to meet them as a deacon on the Sabbath, to meet them as a deacon on the Sabbath for the discussion of low-down republican politics, to meet them upon the Sabbath for the discussion of low-down republican politics with a prospect that these thirty-eight aldermen might be put under lock and key and guarded in the dean’s own house until results were obtained is to disquiet the heart and cast down the soul.

Small marvel that in this connection the deacon says, “It is things like this that make a respectable man wish he never had anything to do with politics. It is these things that make a man feel like quitting at once and giving up the whole job. I cannot believe that my friends would for a moment think that such a report is true and yet there are some people who might believe it, and it is calculated to stir up jealousies. I never contemplated any such conference.”

There you have it. The deacon is in politics to a certain extent, and is also in Sabbath schools to a certain extent, and he does not wish to have those things confounded. We must do him the justice of saying that he met no aldermen at his house on the Sabbath day. We must also do him the justice to assert that upon the Sabbath day he was engaged devoutly with his prayer book and his bible lifted entirely above the contaminating influences of republican politics.

There are two Swifts - Swift the deacon and Swift the politician. Swift the deacon is good upon one day of the seven, that is upon the Sabbath day. Upon the six days of the seven he is Swift the politician. No man upon the Sabbath day must speak to him about the wickedness of republican politics. We may trust that in the fullness of time the distinction which the deacon draws between his true goodness upon the first day of the week and his unhappy bowing to Baal among the remaining days of the week shall be considered for what it is worth.”

Thus we are to consider, whose truth do we want to tell? I’m not sure I have any choice but to tell my own - how would I even presume to try to tell that of Julie, Ian, or Ward for example, what I would even presume for them to want others to know.

Lord knows - as it were - I cannot tell George Swift’s truth. I wish I could. I wish I could tell Lucy’s truth, for that matter, or son Herbert’s, or for that matter that of my own grandmother, his daughter Elizabeth. And I am regretful that some of what I write would make at least some or perhaps all of that family unhappy with my characterizations of who I perceived George to be in this world. I do find divided loyalties on many sides: He is my great-great-grandfather and I have some interest in showing him in his best light. He was also a politician who, in his own way, relished the game and I like to think that some of my own political []  have been handed down from him. He was a reformer, and while this was more common among Republicans than Democrats he seemed even to go against the grain of his Republican brethren, and I have great respect for that.

However he was also a teetotaler and a religious man and I can in no way identify with those choices and I fear at some point I will write in a way that demonstrates how far apart we are, and not show the deference that one should show one’s elder, ones’s forebear, and a man with no small accomplishments. Not only that but we all know that Elizabeth was an intensely private woman, who was loathe to talk too much, which is to say barely at all, about her own grandfather, to the point that it took me delving into the story to find out how historic - and enthralling - the story of his achievement was. I don’t honestly know what she’d think of me writing a history of his life. She might have her own divided loyalties: proud and supportive of a grand-daughter who inherited her own interest in preserving family history, but wary that I would dig too deep or worse, come to conclusions unwarranted by any facts I might find.

And so I must draw upon faith I have, and others have shown me, that I can tell a story that may not be true in the strict sense, but will use anecdotes and contextual history to draw some inferences and tell a story not only worthy of the man, but worthy of his family and worthy for that matter of American and Chicago history. The fact is that during my research of him, I feel that I have come to know him, a little. We know from the epithets used about him that he was smart and small. He was outspoken and irritable. He was a teetotaler and a consummate politician. But he was also practical and humble. He was indeed a political man of principle, in of all places Chicago. He should have been a fish out of water, but instead he used that big brain in that small body to push Chicago into the modern world, and and made major improvements both for the city and its people. His improvements to the lakefront are visible today, and his insistence on civil service requirements put at least a brake on the no-show jobs that were rampant throughout city government until then.

I’m inordinately proud that he is my great-great-grandfather, and prouder still to be able to put some version of his story to paper. I hope that this version does some justice to the man, to Chicago, and to our family.