Commodore Swan
by John Hammond
[Ed.: John Hammond's article originally appeared in the Fall 1997 issue of the Freeholder. Our thanks to Mr. Hammond for permission to reproduce it here.]
In days past, many people around Oyster Bay were known by nicknames; Theodore Roosevelt was known as "The Colonel" after his heroics in the Spanish-American War. Among the many local friends of Theodore Roosevelt was his friend from childhood, William Lincoln Swan, or "The Commodore," as he came to be known.
Swan's father, Benjamin Lincoln Swan, Jr., was one of the early members of the summer community in Oyster Bay and in the 1850s he and his brother Edward became permanent residents of Oyster Bay. Their father had given each of them considerable land holdings in Oyster Bay and Benjamin Swan, Jr. built his home on Cove Neck in 1852. Benjamin and Edward continued their affiliation and membership in the Fifth Avenue Presbyterian Church in New York while also becoming very active in the affairs of the First Presbyterian Church at Oyster Bay. Benjamin Lincoln Swan, Jr.'s uncle, the Reverend Benjamin Lincoln Swan, had joined the Fifth Avenue Presbyterian Church in 1838. Shortly after the Civil War, Benjamin L. Swan, Jr. and his brothers Edward and Otis recommended their uncle to fill the vacant pulpit at the First Presbyterian Church at Oyster Bay. Reverend Swan came to Oyster Bay and served as pastor from 1866 until 1875.
William L. Swan, the son of Benjamin Lincoln Swan, Jr. and Julia Strong Post, was born in New York City on May 28, 1847. He spent the summers of his youth around the waters of Oyster Bay and developed an intense love of nature and the sea. He shared this love with one of his boyhood friends, Theodore Roosevelt, whose family came to Oyster Bay in 1851, when Roosevelt's grandfather rented a house from Billy Swan's grandfather. It was to this house, called Tranquillity, that Roosevelt's father brought his family in the summers.
Billy Swan saw the country torn apart by the Civil War as he entered Princeton University. He continued to spend his summers sailing the bay in a small twenty-five foot jib and mainsail boat he rented from a local bayman. After graduating Princeton, Swan attended Columbia Law School and received his law degree. As a graduation present he was given a forty-two foot centerboard cabin sloop which he named the Glance. The Glance became one of the most famous small yachts in American yachting history. It was aboard the Glance in 1871 that Billy Swan met with a group of friends who shared his interest in sailing. This meeting resulted in the formation of the Seawanhaka Corinthian Yacht Club in 1872 and Swan was elected the first Commodore of the club. Thereafter Billy Swan was known as "Commodore Swan". The Yacht Club has a half model of the Glance in a place of honor in its clubhouse. In 1873 Swan took delivery of a new vessel; a 76 foot, 10 inch yacht built in Brooklyn for him. He named it the Ariel.
In 1870, Swan became a member of Holland Lodge No. 8, Free and Accepted Masons. This began a very active involvement with masonry which was to last the rest of his life. In 1888, Billy Swan began organizing petitions for the formation of a Masonic lodge in Oyster Bay along with Dr. George Washington Faller. Their efforts finally succeeded with the granting of a charter for the formation of Matinecock Lodge No. 806 in 1893. Swan served as the first Master of the Lodge and was instrumental in his boyhood friend Theodore Roosevelt joining Matinecock Lodge several years later.
While Billy Swan maintained a law practice in New York City, he had inherited considerable wealth at an early age and did not actively pursue law as a profession. By 1887, at age 40, he listed his occupation in the Commercial Directory as "retired" but his interests and involvements were many and varied.
William Lincoln Swan, from the collection of John Hammond.
In 1873 he became the Organist and Choir Director at the First Presbyterian Church at Oyster Bay, a position he filled for the next fifty-one years. It was through the choir that he met and fell in love with Belle Thurston, daughter of William W. Thurston. They were married at the First Presbyterian Church at Oyster Bay on Wednesday, August 24, 1881.
Following their marriage they took up residence in one of the oldest houses in the village, just east of Sandy Hill Road. Swan had purchased the house from John A. Weekes, whose family had owned it since the 1600s. The Commodore built greenhouses on a hill behind the house and began Seawanhaka Greenhouses. Later he opened a retail outlet for his flowers in the Fleet building on the corner of South Street and East Main Street, the location of the present Nobman's Hardware.
Swan remained closely connected with the people of the village and greatly enjoyed spinning yarns and singing sea chanteys with the men who worked the oyster boats. On rainy days they often gathered around a pot-bellied stove in one of the shanties at the Oyster Dock to tell tales and sing songs. A bottle on the table added to the afternoon's pleasure. Billy Swan was also a free-spender with his inheritance and was often seen racing around the village roads in a fast buckboard.
Swan was very active in the affairs of the village and served on many boards, including the School Board. In 1898 he led a group that formed the first hospital in the new Nassau County, the appropriately named Nassau Hospital at Mineola. In addition, he was the President of the Oyster Bay Light and Power Company which delivered the first electric power to the village. He also formed the Oyster Bay Water Company which provided the first public water for the village, and when the telephone reached Oyster Bay, it was Billy Swan who again led the way as President of the Queens County Telephone and Telegraph Supply Company.
Shortly before the First World War, Commodore Swan became involved in a personal and public battle with his long time friend, Theodore Roosevelt. At the time, the school district was considering the expansion of the school system and the question arose about merging the Oyster Bay Cove School District into that of the village. Most of the children of the Cove residents went to private schools after finishing the primary grades at the Cove School. Swan was aligned with a group of Cove residents who did not want to consolidate the Cove with the village school district. Their opposition was mainly due to the resultant increase in taxes. Theodore Roosevelt publicly announced his support of the consolidation by stating that the residents of the Cove were duty-bound to contribute to the support of a public school system whether their children used the facilities or not. Roosevelt was also concerned about the education of the children of the many estate workers, including those from his own estate. Both sides won with the Cove district's being consolidated with the village district, but the issue of a new school had to wait for another day.
In 1924 Billy Swan's health began to fail. He decided to move to Baltimore along with his wife and her sister, Julia Thurston, who was for over fifty years Preceptor of the Oyster Bay Schools. He made a few trips back to Oyster Bay, and was planning to attend a special meeting of Matinecock Lodge, when he died of heart failure on November 8, 1925, at the age of 78. A large delegation from the Lodge, plus many friends from the village, traveled to Baltimore to attend the memorial services and funeral for Swan. A large bronze plaque in the First Presbyterian Church at Oyster Bay honors the memory of William L. Swan and his more than half century of service to the church. Few people have left as great a mark on Oyster Bay as Commodore William Lincoln Swan, a Renaissance man in a Victorian image.
