Samuel Ashe Swann Papers

Samuel Ashe Swann was born May 20, 1832 in Pittsboro, Moore County, North Carolina. The Swann family spent each spring and summer in Moore County running their cotton plantation and the fall and winter in Wilmington, North Carolina, on their rice plantation. One of nine children, Swann sought his fortune in Florida when he moved to Fernandina in November 1855 at age 23. He came to North Florida to be the accountant for Finegan and Company, the firm contracted to build the Florida Railroad. In 1859, he married Martha R. Travere of St. Augustine in a ceremony at St. Peter's Episcopal Church in Fernandina, a church in which he was a founding member. The Swanns resided in Fernandina until 1862 when the town was captured by Union troops. As an avowed supporter of the Confederacy, Swann evacuated to Gainesville, remaining there until the close of the war, and then returning to Fernandina in 1867. Fernandina continued to be Swann's home until his death on August 26, 1909.

Swann was instrumental in initiating and furthering the growth of commerce and business in Florida. When Swann first reached Florida in 1855, he found a wilderness with population centers restricted to the coastal settlements. (The population in 1850, five years after statehood, was 87,445.) The state's Internal Improvement Act was less than a year old and investors and promoters were busily engaged in establishing rights of way for a system of railroads through available federal land. Within this context, the Florida Railroad, incorporated in 1853, initiated plans for a cross-peninsula rail service to connect the Atlantic and Gulf coasts.

Just as the new rail route neared completion, however, the Civil War, however, intervened to halt commercial activity. Only a few months after the bed for the railroad was finished, Florida seceded from the Union. In 1862, when Union forces occupied Fernandina, Swann moved the headquarters of the Florida Railroad Company to Gainesville. David Levy Yulee, president of the company, and Florida's first U.S. Senator, also left Fernandina for Gainesville, where he bought and managed a plantation 60 miles outside the town. Swann remained in Gainesville as an agent for a lumber firm until 1867.

Following the war, Swann returned to Fernandina and pursued further business interests. The years 1870 to 1881 saw a period of great growth as immigration inflated the need for land transactions in Florida. Swann became a private land agent, working for firms such as the Florida Land and Immigration Company and the Florida Town Improvement Company to negotiate land deals; but probably his most important role during this time period was as a special agent for Florida's Internal Improvement Trust Fund. He was appointed in 1877 to negotiate the sale of three million acres of state lands. The sale was necessary because of the bankrupt condition of the State's railroads, especially the Florida Railroad Company. Although the final sale was to American investors, the correspondence documents extensive negotiations with British investors. These negotiations include proposals for a cross Florida ship canal, a project that would bedevil Florida politics and emerge again and again, in one form or another, well into the state's twentieth century history.