Civil War Physician With Shannon Connection Commemorated

By Suzy Barile

Amongst the many soldiers’ graves in Freeport City Cemetery is an unlikely name: Richard Caswell Swain, an assistant surgeon who served with the Confederate States Army.

Swain was a native of Raleigh, NC, a graduate of the Medical College of Charleston in Charleston, SC, and the only son of David L. Swain, a former NC governor and for 30 years the president of the University of North Carolina (UNC), and Eleanor Hope White Swain, the granddaughter of the state’s first Revolutionary War governor, Richard Caswell.

Named for his maternal great-grandfather, Swain was a smart young man who graduated at the age of 20 from UNC in 1858 and headed to Jefferson Medical College in Philadelphia, PA, to begin his medical studies.

Abraham Lincoln’s 1860 election as president prompted a parade of southern states to secede from the Union and necessitated Swain’s transfer to the Medical College of Charleston (SC), before an impending war forced him to leave school prior to graduation. In 1861, he became a physician’s apprentice in Weldon, NC.

Weldon was a busy town located along the railroad, with war supplies flowing daily from the capital of the Confederacy in Richmond, Va., to Raleigh and other strongholds south. Swain probably treated numerous soldiers injured in battle and sent to military and civilian hospitals.

In the spring of 1862, shortly after his bride of less than a year died unexpectedly, Swain left Weldon for his father’s hometown of Asheville, NC, in Buncombe County, and volunteered with the 39th North Carolina Regiment. He served as assistant surgeon from August 1862 until his discharge in May 1863, treating soldiers at the military hospital in Shelbyville, Tenn.

Over the next two years, Swain tried to establish practices in both Shelbyville, where he became enamored with and married a Shelbyville girl, and in his hometown of Chapel Hill. But the aftermath of war, and the effects of what today would probably be diagnosed as post traumatic stress syndrome, made it difficult for him to find success.

The Shannon Connection

At the urging of his brother-in-law, General Smith D. Atkins of Freeport, Swain moved to Shannon in Carroll County in early 1868. The soon-to-be-chartered village had a growing population in need of a physician.

The opportunity to move to Illinois with his wife, Margaret Steele Swain, and their daughter Eleanor Louise, allowed Swain to open “an extensive practice in medicine and surgery,” according to the Freeport Weekly Journal.

A letter from his sister, Ella Swain Atkins of Freeport, to their parents in Chapel Hill described his busy life: “ … [he is] attending to his business and plenty business to do . . . He has written us quite often of late but has only been to see us twice since . . . and tho we are ever glad to see him . . . he is where he should be at his post attending to his profession.”

That service to his community was cut short when he was killed in a railroad accident. According to a news item in the February 17, 1872, Medical and Surgical Journal weekly, Swain was attempting to board a moving westbound train on January 29, 1872, when he slipped and fell under the train, and died of his injuries. In published obituaries, both the Freeport Weekly Journal and the local German newspaper noted his “generosity” and “kindly sympathy … to all with whom he came in contact.”

Swain’s remains were sent to Freeport and he was buried in the City Cemetery beside William Eddy, a Union soldier.

Upon the death of Swain’s mother in 1883, and according to her wishes, a monument was erected: “Sacred to the memory of Richard Caswell Swain, son of Hon. David Swain, and Eleanor, his wife, of NC. Born Raleigh, 11/28/1837. Died by accident on railroad near Shannon, Ill., Jan. 29, 1872. Erected by his affectionate EHWS of Raleigh, NC.”

Over time, however, the headstone was lost. A 1932 cemetery census conducted by the Freeport chapter of the Daughters of the American Revolution noted only his name and a portion of the inscription remained.

But that documentation and his CSA records are what his descendants needed to request a new marker from the Veterans Administration. During a 3 p.m. Saturday, July 23 ceremony, the marker will be placed at the site of Swain’s grave by his descendants.

(Note: Suzy Barile of Harmony, NC, is the 3rd-great niece of Richard C. Swain and the author of Undaunted Heart: The True Story of a Southern Belle & a Yankee General [Eno Publishers 2009], about her great-great grandparents, Ella Swain and General Smith D. Atkins. She is an English / Journalism Instructor, Wake Tech CC, Raleigh, and author of Undaunted Heart: The True Story of a Southern Belle and a Yankee General (www.enopublishers.org) -- IPPY Silver Medalist for Best Non-Fiction/South East Region AND Honorable Mention/NFPW Non-Fiction History.(copyright 2011)

 

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