Mary and Elizabeth Swift - from the Isle of Sheppey to the Iowa prairies
The life choices for a young Victorian woman were limited. So, while Thomas Crayden's Swift's eight sons had to decide on what trade to follow, the main choice facing his seven daughters was who to marry (and that, of course, may not always have been entirely their choice). Only the youngest, Susannah, remained single.
But his first two daughters - and their husbands - then made another choice - to emigrate to the United States to try and build their lives there. This post tells their stories.
Mary Ann Swift - starting out as a servant
By a quirk of the reproductive odds, although the sexes of Thomas Crayden Swift's fifteen children ended up almost evenly spread, Mary Ann Swift was the only daughter born from the first two of his three marriages. She was born to his first wife, Susannah Foord, in 1822 in Minster-on-Sheppey.
In the 1841 census, as was so common for young women at the time, Mary Ann is working as a servant in Gravesend, the town along the Thames from Sheppey where her eldest brother, John Crayden Swift, was also working as a carpenter.
Her work was in the Customs House in Gravesend, in the household of Admiralty official Antonio Brady and his family, a naturalist who became Sir Antonio Brady, and donated his fossil collection to the Natural History Museum!
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| F.S = Female Servant |
By November 1851, she had married the son of a farmer, Frederick Jacob, in Stowting, Kent. This is the village where her mother, Susannah Foord, had been buried so there may well have been existing links between the two families. It's also the family that her older brother, William Swift, marries into in 1864, with Frederick's younger sister, Mary, becoming his wife.
Moving to New York
However, while William and Mary had then headed to Lewisham to build their lives, Mary Ann and Frederick had already long since left to the United States to build theirs. The passenger list for the Ship Victoria crossing from London to New York, arriving on 5th February 1852, contains the names of Frederick and Mary Ann - travelling in the cheapest 'steerage class':
West to Iowa
Of course, these lands had been homes to others for generations. Then came the 'Louisiana Purchase' of 1803, which nominally ceded the area to the United States, followed by the driving out of the Sauk, Meskwaki and other Native American peoples, leaving Iowa to be given 'statehood' in 1846. The new inhabitants were mainly settlers from other American states at first but, particularly as railroads were being built across Iowa, more arrived from overseas, particularly Germans and Irish, alongside others, like William and Mary Jacob, from Britain.
Perhaps William and Mary had seen publications like Newhall's "Sketches of Iowa: or, The Emigrant's Guide", which had been written for prospective British emigrants. It's second (1846) edition described Boone County as one of the "new counties recently laid off on our western frontier ... generally salubrious, dry and elevated, affording abundant range for pasturage; equally susceptible of producing all the various grains and fruit that yield so abundantly elsewhere. Thus, another wide and unoccupied field is laid open to the advancing tide of emigration that is annually spreading over our fertile prairies".
Perhaps Boone County proved to be not quite so 'salubrious' in reality because, by the time of the 1860 US Census, Frederick Jacob is listed as a farmer in Fremont Township, Buchanan County, together with Mary and, now, four children:
A guide like Newhall's may also have attracted the Jacobs and others to the area, as it had been there described as one of "the extreme north-western counties of the "Old Purchase," and but recently organized. The population is at present sparse, although they present great inducements to the enterprising emigrant. The timber is good, the water power is abundant; possessing, also, one of the best climates in Iowa. This region is destined, at no distant period, to form a very important portion of the Territory. Many eligible locations, unclaimed, can yet be purchased at $1.25 per acre. Land Office, at Dubuque".
An excerpt from the 1878 "History of Black Hawk County" (see below) confirms that 'in the Fall of 1860' the Jacobs moved to Mount Vernon Township in nearby 'Black Hawk' County - an area named after the defeated Sauk leader. It's now farming country to the north of the cities of Waterloo - Cedar Falls.
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| Mount Vernon Township - 1875 and today (via Google Maps) |
Reading between the lines of Newhall's earlier guide, farming in Black Hawk could not have been an easy life for its early settlers: "The county is quite new, and offers a tempting field to the enterprising. Eligible locations can be made, consisting of choice lands, for those that are willing to make the sacrifice, for a few years, of the comforts to be obtained in the more densely populated portions of the country".
American Civil War
However, in the next year, 1861, the United States was thrown into Civil War. Iowa provided many soldiers for the Union army, including Frederick Jacob. His record card for the "Grand Army of the Republic", an influential Union Army veterans' organisation, shows that he enlisted in August 1862 and was discharged for disability in January 1865. Memoirs from another soldier in Frederick's 31st Regiment point out that most casualties "were the result of disease and sickness, not combat". However, the 1878 article below suggests he was 'wounded in battle' in Dallas, Georgia, in May 1864:
The article reveals that the couple had not cut all ties with England - returning there from December 1866 to March 1867, - on their return Frederick then "settling on his present farm of 160 acres" - and then again from December 1874 to 1875. Who knows what they made of the contrast between the Iowa prairie and life in London.
Farming in Mount Vernon
The records remaining from an 1880 agricultural census gives more detail on the Jacobs' farm at that time - 80 acres of tilled land, 105 acres of permanent meadows and 15 acres of woodland, with an estimated value of $800. They have cattle and pigs, but no sheep, and grow corn, oats, wheat and potatoes. The farm has a small apple orchard too:
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| The 1880 census of Frederic Jacob's farm |
To help their father with such an undertaking, the three eldest boys - Thomas (17), Frederick William (14) and John (11) - are all listed as "works on farm" in the 1870 census, with Mary "keeping house". By the 1880 census, Thomas and John are no longer living in the household (it looks like they have headed to California) but the youngest son, Morphew (then 18) now "works on the farm" with Frederick William and their father, the "farmer":
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| From the 1880 census for Mount Vernon Township |
Their daughter Susanna is simply listed above as being "at home" alongside her mother Mary, but she was very soon to marry to become, as described in this newspaper snippet, "Mrs. Fred Gibbs". Sadly, the paper is reporting her death in childbirth in 1895:
The 1900 and 1910 censuses show that both Mary and Frederick continued to live together as a couple at the Jacob family homestead until their deaths - in 1911 and 1910 respectively. An obituary in the local "Courier" newspaper states that Mary Ann passed away "after a long illness".
Frederick - the "Capitalist"
The 1900 census (which also confirms their arrival in the US in 1852) is worth a closer look - because farmer Frederick's occupation is listed as "Capitalist" !
Was this delusions of grandeur, or perhaps a sense of humour? Who knows! Frederick and Mary may have had a bit of land - but they were hardly big landowners (!) - just one of the many farming families listed in this 1910 "Atlas of Black Hawk County" - complete with their photographs:
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| It's hard to be sure - but "Frederick Jacobs" may be hidden under 'CENTER') |
The couple were buried in Janesville cemetery, along with their daughter and his husband. There's a nice detail on the gravestone - Frederick is said to have come came from "East Kent" and Mary Ann from "West Kent". There is also a separate small memorial honouring Frederick as a war veteran from Company B of the 31st Iowa Infantry.
Elizabeth Sarah follows Mary Ann to the US
The journey to Iowa was certainly one that took Mary Ann a long way from the life that most of the Swifts led back in London. However, the news that arrived back there from Iowa (perhaps also in person as we shall see below) was clearly attractive enough to encourage her younger sister, Elizabeth Sarah Swift, to make that journey too.
Elizabeth, born and baptised in Eastchurch, Sheppey, in November 1834, was Thomas Crayden Swift's ninth child - but only his second daughter.
By the time of the 1851 census, six more children had been born, five of them girls. They are all listed as living at home with their parents, along with Elizabeth Sarah - now 16 - and the older brother William who had stayed at home to work with his father on the family butchers trade.
Becoming Mrs. Bretnall
In 1861, the census shows Elizabeth is still at home in Eastchurch. However, in 1862, she marries John Bretnall in the Church of St.John the Evangelist, Notting Hill. John is a carpenter, the son of George Bretnall, a builder (and carpenter), originally from Suffolk. The witnesses are Elizabeth's father, Thomas Crayden Swift, and younger sister, Anne Stroud Swift:
They are listed as living at 6 Clarendon Road, perhaps close to, or even in the same household as, Elizabeth's brother George Graves Swift who, records show, was also married and living in this area in the 1860s.
But while their marriage was in an Anglican church, their second child, Annie Graves Bretnall, was baptised in the Denbigh Road Wesleyan Chapel in Notting Hill. Intriguingly, this is the same Chapel attended by another family in my ancestry - the Cox family.
From John Bretnall's family records, he seems to have been brought up in a non-conformist tradition too. As further evidence of that tradition continuing in the family, specifically 'temperance', a record remains of the "pledge of total abstinence" signed by their third child, Frank Wood Bretnall, in September 1877. It was produced by the 'Independent Order of Good Templars', a temperance organisation that had originally been founded in the United States:
These religious distinctions - and perhaps the connection with the United States - are only significant because of John and Frank Wood Bretnall's later occupations - as Methodist Ministers ... in the United States.
The Bretnalls decide to emigrate
The 1871 census gives no hint of this change of occupation. Elizabeth and her family are living in Lillie Road, Fulham, with John's trade given as 'builder'. However, a possible sign of economic pressures on the family are the fact that two of their four children are listed as living with relatives - Frank with Elizabeth's brother Edward Crayden Swift, and Annie with her grandparents, Thomas Crayden and Ann Swift.
The arrival of two more children in the 1870s - and perhaps also the death of Elizabeth's mother Ann in 1880 - may have added to both the pressure on the family and the attraction of emigration to the United States.
An obituary for Elizabeth - after her death in Boulder, Colorado, in 1928 - explains that "in the early 80s they came to this country and Rev. Bretnall held pastorates in Ohio and other middle western states". The 1900 US Census gives the arrival date as 1881, a date confirmed by a passenger list for the 'Bothnia', arriving in New York from Liverpool on 10th February 1881, carrying the couple and all six children, travelling - as you might expect - by the cheapest 'steerage' class:
But a closer look at the passenger lists shows that they are travelling with friends to guide them on their way - Fred and Mary A Jacob! Perhaps that's not so surprising - given the evidence above that Frederick and Mary Ann had already returned to England to visit family twice previously. It will have at least meant that the Bretnalls had some experienced emigrants ready to help them travel and settle in the States.
West to Iowa
While the Bretnalls may have travelled with the Jacobs, if the obituary quoted above is correct, then they didn't immediately travel west to Iowa with them. Instead, they first travelled through 'other middle western states', including Ohio. While doing so, John Bretnall was now having to learn a new profession - and in a new country - being a pastor.
However, if the obituary is correct, then it wasn't long before they reached Iowa. An 1885 Iowa State Census lists all eight Bretnalls as living in New Hartford in Butler County - the next county to the west of Black Hawk, where the Jacobs had settled. The three eldest Bretnalls are given professions - the eldest child Stuart is a 'teacher', Elizabeth is simply 'wife'. Against John, although the record is rather indistinct, it looks like "M. E. Minister" has been written - Methodist Episcopal Minister.
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| The Counties of Iowa - on a modern map of the state |
Other records show that John Bretnall had been naturalised as an American citizen in Waterloo, Iowa in 1886. However, I can't trace them in the census records in the 1890s, although a newspaper article for 1890 reports that John was appointed Minister at the small town of Stanwood, in Cedar County. This family photo, from a firm based in another small Iowa town, Independence, in Buchanan County, also dates from around this time:
Both John's naturalisation, and his profession as a Methodist Minister, are clearly confirmed in the 1900 US Federal Census:
This census shows that John and Elizabeth are now in the south of Black Hawk County Iowa - living at Commercial Street, La Porte City, Big Creek. Only two children remain with their parents - Annie, "teacher", and Elizabeth Marion, "dressmaker".
The fours sons have left home in 1900 - and three of them can be traced in the census to addresses elsewhere in Iowa. Stuart and Frank Wood are both listed as 'Minister' and go on to follow this profession in their lives, just like their father (remembering it was Frank W who appears to have already had some link with the 'Independent Order of Good Templars' while still in London).
George is a 'Professor', although at a seminary, but is listed later in life as a teacher of biology. Later census records show that his sister, Annie, also continues as a teacher as does his youngest brother, Reginald (shown below as a Principal at Upper Iowa University).
By the 1910 census, Elizabeth (now 75) and John (now 73), accompanied by their two daughters, have moved westwards from Iowa to Boulder, Colorado:
All but two of the sons seem to have moved west too. Reginald, listed as a public school teacher, is living with his wife and children at another address in Boulder. However, of the three Bretnalls listed in the Boulder Directory of 1913, it's the youngest daughter, Elizabeth Marion, that has the biggest entry - as a stenographer for the Boulder Commercial Association:
Frank Wood, listed as a Minister, is also listed in the 1910 census living with his wife and son in the state of Colorado, although about 90 miles away in Fort Morgan. Indeed, a 1904 newspaper report suggests that it might have been Frank who first decided to be Colorado-bound:
Harold, however, seems to have turned to a rather different profession than his father. He becomes a private detective - and rather a controversial one too! His name appears in several 1940s newspaper reports about his involvement in wire-tapping and even his involvement in an investigation into an alleged Soviet spy!
From England to the US
John Bretnall dies in Boulder in 1914, Elizabeth Sarah in 1928 - at the age of 93, after a year of "failing health" according to her obituary - a "pioneer resident ... one of the oldest women in Boulder":
The contrast between the places of birth and death of Elizabeth Sarah, her husband and sons, is striking and gives a picture of how emigrants - from many different countries - came to build their lives in the United States.
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