07/24/2024
Boston Tea Party participant James Swan was born in 1754 in Dunfermline, Fife, Scotland. He would move to Boston about 1765 and was apprenticed to the Thaxter & Co. merchant house in Boston. Swan was an industrious young man, and in 1772, at just 18 years of age, he would publish a pamphlet suggesting the abolishment of the American slave trade. Swan was also a member of the North End Caucus and, along with Samuel Adams, called for a town meeting to protest the Tea Act in November of 1773. On December 16, 1773, James Swan would take part in the Destruction of the Tea and it is said he donned a disguise in a home on Hanover Street in Boston before heading to Griffin’s Wharf.
After the “Destruction of the Tea”, he served in an artillery regiment along with fellow Boston Tea Party Participant, Thomas Crafts. Swan would become Captain of that regiment and was later promoted to the rank of Major. He fought and was injured at the Battle of Bunker Hill in June of 1775. Following hostilities at Lexington and Concord, Swan would be appointed clerk and account keeper for the Massachusetts Provincial Congress committee on supplies. He would also join St. Andrew’s Lodge of Freemasons in 1777.
Most notable among Swan’s post war exploits was his attempt to purchase the national debt from France, which the newly formed United States owed for France’s support in the war effort. He essentially purchased the entirety of this debt in July of 1795. The sum reached $2,024,899.
In 1776, he would marry Hepzibah Clarke. The match was hugely advantageous for Col. Swan, yet still managed to overextend himself financially. In 1787, laden with debt, he went to France. In Paris, he made many friends and became known as a brilliant financier. After a brief stint back in Boston, he returned again to Paris as a supplier for the French army during the Napoleonic Wars. In 1808, a business associate filed a claim against him, which he stubbornly denied. Nonetheless, he was imprisoned for the next 22 years as the case dragged through the French judicial system. With his financial flexibility and influential friends, Swan could have secured his release from prison at any time, but he refused to yield on principle alone. Each time the creditor returned to renew the claim for payment, Swan politely saluted his adversary and asked of the jailer, “My friend, return me to my chamber.”
In July 1830, Swan was finally released. At one time one of the wealthiest men in Boston, he was now hopelessly insolvent, heart broken, and most of his allies gone. Less than a year later, in March of 1831, as the end neared, Swan embraced his old friend Lafayette on the steps of the Hotel de Ville one final time. He would die the next day at age 76.
