Jacob Armstrong Swisher

Background

Jacob was born on August 1, 1884, in Watseka, Illinois, United States; the son of William Hatfield Swisher and Nancy (Scudder) Swisher.

Education

Little is known of Swisher’s childhood, but after he finished his formal schooling, he lived a peripatetic lifestyle until the early 1920s. Between 1905 and 1909, Jacob studied law at the University of Illinois, in Champaign, Illinois, United States, without taking a degree.

Career

As of 1910, Jacob was teaching in Bureau County, Illinois, where he met Nora Mae Anthony, another teacher. The two were married that year in Nora’s hometown of Providence. Presumably, Swisher continued to teach in Illinois for the next few years, but in 1914 he and his wife and a daughter, Dorothea, moved to Iowa City, where, at age 30, he matriculated at the State University of Iowa to begin his college education.

After earning his Bachelor of Arts, he took a position as superintendent of schools for Garfield Township in Clay County, where he registered for the draft during World War I, he was never called to duty. Early in 1920, census enumerators caught up with the Swishers, now with four children, in Mankato, Minnesota, where Jacob was teaching at a commercial college.

The Swishers came back to Iowa City in 1922 so that Jacob could undertake graduate studies. For the next five years, he worked part-time at SHSI, and after receiving his Doctor of Philosophy degree in political science in 1927, he assumed the position of research associate, a position he held until he retired in 1950. During his 28-year career with SHSI, he wrote more than 100 articles for the society’s various serial publications and authored several books, including Leonard Fletcher Parker (1927), The American Legion in Iowa (1929), The Iowa Department of the Grand Army of the Republic (1936), Robert Gordon Cousins (1938), Iowa-Land of Many Mills (1940), and Iowa-In Times of War (1943).

In addition to a demanding professional career, Swisher was active in civic affairs. He served as state president of the Wesley Foundation Board of the Methodist church, as a member of the Iowa City School Board, and on Iowa City’s city council. He also was active in the Kiwanis Club and published a history of that organization in Iowa in the Palimpsest (1960). After retiring from SHSI, he remained in the Iowa City vicinity and wrote poetry as a hobby. He died on July 7, 1976, at Solon, Iowa.

Works

More photos

• book

  • Iowa Pioneer Foundations, V1-2
  • Iowa History As Told In Biography 1932
  • Robert Gordon Cousins: Iowa Biographical Series 1938

Views

Quotations: Jacob recalled that “having had a wife...sort of placed him in a class all by himself, for married students were the exception rather than the rule in those days.”

Connections

In 1910 Jacob married Nora Mae Anthony. They had seven children. Following the death of his wife, Nora, in 1949, Swisher married Blanche A. Fletcher in 1950.

Father:

William Hatfield Swisher

Mother:

Nancy (Scudder) Swisher

Spouse:

Blanche A. Fletcher

ex-spouse:

Nora Mae Anthony

Daughter:

Dorothea Swisher

colleague:

Ruth Gallaher

References

• The Biographical Dictionary of Iowa Iowa has been blessed with citizens of strong character who have made invaluable contributions to the state and to the nation. In the 1930s alone, such towering figures as John L. Lewis, Henry A. Wallace, and Herbert Hoover hugely influenced the nation’s affairs.
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