From Proud Heritage, Volume I by DCPA, currently out of print.
George Marcus Swink was born in Blountville, Alabama, in 1832. In 1836 a beautiful baby girl named Rebecca was born to the Roberts family who lived in Kingston, Tennessee.
As it happened, both families moved to Linn Creek, Missouri. When young George was 14 years old and the beautiful Rebecca was 8 years old, they happened to meet. It was love at first sight. George said, “That’s the girl I am going to marry.” And sure enough that is the way it happened. They married when he was 23 and she was 17.
George and Rebecca lived in Linn Creek for many years. Eight children were born to them. They lost one child, a girl, at age 4.
Captain Swink, as he was later called, established a mercantile house and was also elected to the Missouri State Legislature. When the Civil War broke out, he volunteer ed and was made a captain. He made an excellent record during the war, serving in Texas. When he had been gone from home for about three years, Rebecca decided that she was tired of living without him. She had heard rumors that he was in Texas. She hired a wagon, team, and driver and set out. She and three children had to go through blockades and other trials, but after several months they arrived at a little town in Texas called Cotton Gin. Rebecca saw her brother who was also a soldier. He told her to wait in Cotton Gin and he would get word to her husband as to their location. He did get word to him, and Captain got to Cotton Gin as fast as he could. His daughter Irene was born in Cotton Gin.
The war was soon over, and Captain Swink decided to go west. He loaded up all their belongings and set out in a covered wagon. It took several days to reach the town they wanted to live in. It was a tiny town called Dallas. As his daughter Irene remembers, there were five houses there when they arrived.
The first Swink residence in Dallas was about where the Magnolia Building is today. When Anna Vernon Swink was born, the residence was at the corner of Harwood and Jackson. That was in 1870. When George Bannerman Dealey came to Dallas to found The News, he was said to have been a guest in the Swink home (hotels being what they were in those days).
Captain Swink was a big, tall good-looking man and his wife was a very tiny lady, but they had a beautiful life together.
The Swinks soon found friends. Captain Swink and some other people formed a company and opened a dry goods store. Later he rented the building to a Mr. Sanger who said, “I will never have enough goods to fill that building.” (Famous last words!)
One of Captain Swink’s partners was a widow named Mrs. Cockrell, and there were also several men partners. They built and owned a bridge across the Trinity River which lasted a long time. Materials for the bridge had to be hauled from Corsicana by oxen, but the bridge was finally finished and everybody was very proud of it.
Captain Swink also entered the banking business and was a cashier in the Exchange Bank later called The National Exchange Bank.
The Swink and Cockrell Company decided the town needed a street car. Captain Swink went to St. Louis and bought 2 cars in 1872. When the cars came, he hitched up his horse to one and drove his family around town. My mother, Irene, was very proud to be able to say that she rode in Dallas’ first street car. Captain Swink named the car the “Belle Swink” after his daughter Belle.
At the time Captain Swink inaugurated the horse-drawn street car line he was also president of the Exchange Bank and was one of the founders of the State Fair of Texas. Rebecca was a charter member of the First Methodist Episcopal Church, South, now the First United Methodist Church of Dallas.
Captain Swink gave Dallas County land for a school. The school was used as a county school for a long time and then was incorporated into the city. My grandmother, Rebecca, later sued the city and was paid $1,000.00 for the land.
The eldest daughter, Belle, married Jake Williams and they had at least three children, two sons and a daughter. The latter married Ed Dechman, a long-time employee in the City Hall at Dallas.
Irene, the second daughter, married Will Henry, who for many years operated the only cigar factory in Dallas, known as Henry-Reiger, in the Carroll Avenue area.
Anna was wed in 1899 to Joseph Taylor Buckingham, Sr. owner at that time of Dallas’ largest drug store at the southwest corner of Main and Akard. A few years later, when the Elks brought Dallas its first big national convention, an arch was erected over the intersection with the B.P.O.E. insignia on it. The arch remained for some time after the convention. Once a man was hanged from it, the victim of an overnight lynching.
When Anna and Irene were young ladies, Captain Swink was asked by the Governor of Texas to be Land Commissioner for North West Texas with headquarters in Crosby County. He accepted the job for two summers and took his wife and two daughters with him. They lived on the Llano Estacado in a house that was partly underground. Irene had taken her piano with her. One of her cowboy friends was visiting her and asked if he could see the piano. She told him to go on in the house and look at it. He went in but came back and said that he could not find it because he did not know what a piano looked like. So she had to go in and show him where it was.
Captain Swink sold a lot of land for the state, and when his two years were up he moved back to Dallas. While he was in North West Texas he was called a judge, but the Dallas folks always called him Captain.
In 1900 the Swink home was located at 431 Bryan (a number soon changed to 2815) in the vicinity of St. Paul Sanitarium and the W. A. Green home. Before Captain Swink died in 1906, Rebecca was struck down by a bicycle and walked with two crutches for the rest of her life.
By Anna Belle Henry Tyson, granddaughter, Lubbock and Joseph Taylor Buckingham, Jr., grandson, Houston
