BIOGRAPHIES: William Prescott SWIFT, Rice Lake and Barron, Barron County, WI

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**Posted for informational purposes only - poster is not related to the 
subject of this biography and has no further information.

William Prescott Swift, attorney at law, West Superior, was born at Wait's 
River, Orange county, Vt., April 20, 1849, and is the seventh of the fourteen 
children of Henry Spencer and Dianna C. (Holden) Swift, the father a native 
of Washington county, Vt., and the mother of Providence, R. I.  His paternal 
ancestors came from Ireland and located in Massachusetts in the seventeenth 
century.  Phineas Swift, the grandfather of our subject, was a captain in a 
Vermont troop in the war of 1812.  His wife, Deborah Dearborn, was a nice of 
the secretary of war, Henry Dearborn, appointed by President Jefferson in 
1801, and for whom the fort on the present site of Chicago was named.  When 
William P. was five years of age his parents moved to Edgerton, Rock county, 
this state.  At the age of fourteen he left home without the knowledge of his 
parents and attempted to enter the army as an artilleryman, but was not 
accepted on account of his youth.  Proceeding to Chicago, he found employment 
on a lumber schooner plying Lake Michigan, and the succeeding fall went into 
the pineries in Mason county, Mich.  The following spring he enlisted at 
Chicago and was taken from there to Buffalo, and was credited to Erie county, 
N. Y., as a member of the Sixteenth infantry, regular brigade, Fourteenth army 
corps, and was place in service int he army of the Cumberland, taking part in 
Sherman's Atlanta campaign, in August, 1864.  He was subsequently placed on 
garrison duty at Lookout Moutain, and was at Memphis in 1866 during the riots 
there.  He was discharged in the spring of that year, and returned to his 
parents' home in November.  He then took a course of instruction at Albion 
academy, Dane county, this state.

In 1869 he went on the Wisconsin river log drive, in the employ of Stewart 
Bros. Wausau, Wis., and later rafted lumber down the same stream.  He was 
also employed in the Minnesota harvests, and in the fall of 1871 found his 
way to Chippewa Falls, where he read law two years with Bingham & Jenkins.  
In 1873 he was elected police justice of that city, and the next year was an 
unsuccessful candidate on the republican ticket for clerk of the circuit court.  
In 1874 he was admitted to the bar, and two years later was elected city 
attorney, serving one term.  He removed to Barron in 1879 and engaged in the 
practice of law.  Two years later he was elected county judge, and held the 
office by re-election for eight successive years.  In 1888 he was a candidate 
for judge of the Eleventh circuit, but was defeated by the vote of Chippewa 
county.  In 1882 he removed to Rice Lake, for which city he was the first city 
attorney, and later was elected supervisor therin, and where he was a resident 
until 1891, when he became a member of the firm of Swift, Murphy & Bundy, at 
West Superior.  Judge Swift has continuously acted with the republican party, 
in whose councils he still holds a prominent part.  He is a member of the 
G. A. R., the A. F. and A. M. and the K. of P., and is trustee of the First 
Presbyterian church of Rice Lake.  IN 1876 he married Miss Diana, daughter of 
Hon. C. J. Wiltse, whose biography appears in this volume.  To this union has 
been born one son, Hector.

-Transcribed from the "Historical and Biographical Album of the Chippewa 
Valley Wisconsin, 1891-2", pages 503-504.