Swope Genealogy back to Colonial Days

Jennifer Hodge (Swope), my cousin, recently had some genealogy research done on our line of Swopes in the United States and tracked it back 7 generations to our great-great-great-great-great-grandfather, Jacob Schoap, born in Germany just two years before the outbreak of the American Revolution who emigrated to the territory that would later become the state of Ohio. Many thanks to Jenny for sharing this information. I will do my best to interpret the records and recount history accurately, but I apologize for any mistakes.

• Jacob Swope (b. 06-May-1774) was a German immigrant, born Jacob Schoap, who made his way to Seneca, Ohio to become a farmer. He married Dorothea Weller (b. 09-Dec-1789) from Frederic County, Virginia, who at 15 years his junior, was nearly young enough to be his daughter. Beginning in 1809, when he was 35 and she was 20, they had the first of 13 children. Their fourth child, Henry, was born in 1813, when Jacob was 39. Their last arrived in 1833 when Dorothea was 44 and Jacob was 59! Perhaps it was his young wife or maybe it was the result of having children so late in life, but something kept him young at heart for Jacob lived to be 86 years old.
• Henry Swope (b. 13-Sep-1813) continued living in Ohio and, in 1839, broke tradition with his father to marry a woman his own age, Elizabeth Williams (b. 11-June-1817), who was only four years younger than himself. Not wanting to wait the typical 9-10 months for gestation, Elizabeth gave birth to John, the first of their 8 children, just four months after their nuptials. Henry lived 76 years.
• John R Swope (b. 10-Jun-1839) was born in the town of Jackson in Seneca County, Ohio. He continued the practice of marrying someone his own age and, in 1861, the first year of the Civil War, he wedded Mary Ann Nederhouser (b. 10-Sep-1842) from near Akron, OH. John would have been 21 at the outbreak of the Civil War, but I have no information on whether or not he participated. It is worth noting that Ohio remained loyal to the Union, so if John did participate, it's safe to assume the same of him. According to one record, his second child was born only a few months after the end of the Civil War, over a year after according to another. But because his first child was born in the middle of that conflict, it is possible he did not participate at all. Public records conflict a bit. In fact, they suggest that John married twice to women of virtually identical names & age who both bore John sons, in consecutive years, who also shared the same name. I will assume John's two wives and two sons are, in fact, one and the same, because such a coincidence is just too hard to believe. It is possible that Mary Ann’s last name was spelled Neiderhouser, and it appears the first of their two children arrived two years after their wedding. Another two years later, Jacob H was born in 1865 (1866 according to another record). John lived 62 years and was buried in Fostoria, OH.
• Jacob H Swope (b. 30-Jul-1865) arrived on the scene just five years after the death of his namesake, the pre-Revolutionary, cradle-robbing great-grandfather, with whom he shared longevity. Jacob may have been the one to relocate to Michigan, as records show he was buried there in 1953 at the age of 88. But I skipped ahead. Jacob H married Ida Millhime (b. 1869) some time before he died and, presumably, before they had at least two children. Curiously, the public records I saw don't show that any of their children were named Howard, but I've been told they brought my great-grandfather into the world in 1892, when Jacob was 27 and Ida was 23.
• Howard Swope (b. 1892), my great-grandfather, was born in Ohio, was a veteran of the first World War, and worked as a laborer in a Michigan shipyard for a time. He lived in Trenton, a suburb of Detroit with his wife, Lillian Stuck, and children. I never met my great-grandfather and, if I remember the stories correctly, I think Howard may have gone on to live a bit of a troubled life. The story goes that he accidentally killed his first wife, my great-grandmother, one night when he mistook her for a burglar. Howard changed his last name to Adams, possibly to avoid legal detection and left the state and his family. Whatever the particulars of his life, he did me and my family a great service by fathering Russell Swope in 1923.
• Russell H Swope (b. 09-Nov-1923), my grandfather, was born in Michigan, I believe in Trenton. I knew my grandfather to be a kind and hard-working man. He served in World War II and, after his return from service, married Doris Grote (b. 1927), the daughter of Ruth and George. Together, my grandparents had 6 children in Michigan, the third being my father, Randy and the last of whom came as an unexpected blessing when Russell was 45 and Doris was 40, only a few months before the birth of their first grandchild. They eventually relocated to Pinellas county, Florida in the late 1970s. Most of their children followed, sooner or later, with their oldest two sons waiting to finish their careers in Michigan before both retiring to Florida. Russell worked several jobs over the course of his life, often holding down more than one at a time, including among other jobs factory work, farmer, property manager, and security guard. He smoked more than a pack of cigarettes a day for most of his life, but after a very close call in the 90s, sustained unconscious for a week or so on a ventilator, gave them up entirely to live on another decade and celebrate the birth of at least one more grandchild and several more great-grandchildren. He passed away in 2005 at the age of 81.
• Randy C Swope (b. 06-May-1952), my father, born in Trenton MI is the third of five boys and one girl. He met his future wife, Sherry Westmoreland (b. 07-Apr-1952), in kindergarten, with whom he remained close friends throughout his school years. In Oct-1970, shortly after graduating from high school together, they married and he began work as a restaurant manager. I was born 13 months later, when they were both 19, the first of three boys in six years. Soon after, he was one of the last round of young men to be drafted by the US Army for service in the Vietnam War. Fortunately, the US withdrew from Vietnam before Randy was deployed, so he served his time in non-combat positions, including a few years in Wurzberg, Germany. Following his second hitch, he left the Army and relocated our family to Florida, to restart a career in restaurant management. After nearly 30 years of marriage, he left the family to pursue a different path for his life.

And then there is me, Matthew Swope, continuing a line of Americans, albeit living abroad, that stretches back to before America was a nation. My two wonderful sons, Aidan & Asher, assure that I will not be the last of my line.

An interesting irony is that our family name, Swope, is an Anglicized version of the German surname, Schwab (spelled variously), meaning Swabian or Swabish (effectively, “of Swabia”). Our ancestors, the Suebi, were a Germanic tribe dating back more than 2000 years to at least the time of the early Romans. Along with other Germanic “barbarian” tribes, they eventually helped to topple the Roman Empire and established supremacy over a swath of land that included much of present-day southern Germany and northern Switzerland, with some elements reaching as far as Spain & Portugal. The region of Swabia gave rise to both the great European ruling families of the Habsburgs, rulers of the Holy Roman Empire, Austria, & much of the rest of Europe, and the Hohenzollerns, who ruled as monarchs in Germany/Prussia through the unification of that country to the end of WWI.

After generations of my family in 'the new world', I now live on land that was likely once occupied by the ancient founders of my name and family line. Today, Swabia is the name of a region in the southern German state of Bavaria.