Jacob Swab, retired farmer, was born in Mifflin Township, Dauphin County, Pennsylvania, about 7 April 1822. He is a son of Jacob Swab and Catherine [Metz] Swab.
Jacob Swab was educated in private schools before the free school system was adopted. He had to pay fifty cents per months for his tuition. When a mere boy he was set at work helping to clear and cultivate land. He worked at home until he was twenty-one, and then started out to make a living for himself. He worked on rented farms for five years, beginning with one in Mifflin Township. He then removed to Donaldson, Schuylkill County, Pennsylvania, where he hauled timber to the mines with a two-horse team. He also used his team to draw cars laden with coal from the mines to the Union canal, where it was loaded on boats. At the end of five years he bought a farm in Porter Township, Schuylkill County, which he cultivated for thirteen years. Selling his farm, he returned to Dauphin County and bought another in Washington Township, containing sixty-three acres of land and having a good house on it. Here he made his home until the spring of 1882, when he retired from active business and purchased a house and lot in Elizabethville, where he has lived ever since that time.
Jacob Swab was married, in Mifflin Township, in 1843, to Miss Mary Matter, daughter of Joseph Matter and Catherine [Shoop] Matter, a native of Mifflin Township. She died on the farm in 1881. Their children are: Amelia Swab, deceased, wife of Charles Shoemaker; Catherine Swab, wife of George Echternacht, Marshallstown, Iowa; Edwin Swab, miner, in Lykens, Pennsylvania; Samuel Swab, roof painter, Reading, Pennsylvania; Enoch Swab, farmer, Marshall County, Iowa; Emma Jane Swab, wife of Mahlon Miller, Pottsville, Pennsylvania; Joseph Swab, hotel employee, Buffalo, New York.
Mr. Swab was drafted for the nine months’ service in the army in October 1862. He served ten months in Company F, One Hundred and Seventy-third Regiment, Pennsylvania Volunteers [173rd Pennsylvania Infantry]. He was stationed at Norfolk, Virginia, during most of his time. At the end of the tenth month he came home and was married again in the fall of 1883, to Elizabeth McCully, widow of George Snyder. She is the daughter of Robert McCully and Catherine [Seibold] McCully, the former of Irish and the latter of German descent. She had five children by her first marriage.
In political principles Mr. Swab is a Democrat and attends the Lutheran church, in which he has served as deacon. He also held several minor offices in the village, but has never been a politician in the sense of an office seeker.
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The above information was modified/edited from Commemorative Biographical Encyclopedia of Dauphin County, published in 1896 by J. M. Runk and Company of Chambersburg, Pennsylvania. A free download is available from the Internet Archive.
Note: Jacob Swab died on 13 March 1905 and is buried at the Maple Grove Cemetery, Elizabethville. His grave marker is pictured at the top of this post, there being no available portrait of him at the time of this writing.
See also:
Jacob Swab & Jacob W. Swab – Two Different Elizabethville Area Veterans