Latrobe-Swann family manuscript collection

The Latrobe and Swann families were both well known in Baltimore and throughout Maryland. This collection focuses the sons of Ellen Penrose and Thomas Swann, Jr., Sherlock and Thomas. Thomas Swann, Jr. was the son of Elizabeth Gilmor Sherlock (1813-1876) and Thomas Swann (1809-1883), who was a director of the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad and governor of Maryland. Thomas, Jr. married Ellen Penrose in 1863 and had Thomas on October 3, 1864 and Sherlock on December 27, 1866. Thomas, Jr. died in 1866, a few months before the birth of Sherlock.

Ellen (1847-1916) remarried in 1880 to Ferdinand Claiborne Latrobe, the widower of her first husband’s sister, Louisa Sherlock Swann (1838-1865). Latrobe (1833-1911), the son of Virginia Charlotte Claiborne and John Hazelhurst Boneval Latrobe, served in the Maryland House of Delegates and was first elected to mayor of Baltimore in 1875, a post he held on and off for twenty years. They had three children together: Ellen Virginia, Fernande Charlotte, and Ferdinand Claiborne, Jr.

In his adult life, Thomas Swann III lived in Selma, Virginia. He married Carita Douglas Mason in 1888, and they had one son, Thomas in 1889. Carita died a month after Thomas’ birth. Thomas attended St. John’s School in Fordham, New York and purchased his Loudon County estate shortly after he finished school. He died suddenly in 1896.

Sherlock Swann was a prominent figure in Baltimore politics and society. He was educated at St. John’s School, Georgetown University, and the Maryland Institute. He achieved the rank of colonel when he was appointed to Governor Frank Brown’s military staff in 1892, which launched his career in Maryland government. His uncle and stepfather Mayor Ferdinand C. Latrobe appointed him to the position of Commissioner of Opening the Streets in 1894 and served on the City Council from 1896-1898. He took a break from civil service until 1904 when after Baltimore’s Great Fire, he headed Burnt District Commission. He served on the Board of Police Commissioners from 1908 to 1910 and made great improvements to the Traffic Department. President Woodrow Wilson appointed him to Postmaster for Baltimore in 1913. He was appointed to Commissioner of Traffic in 1924. He married Edith Robinson De Ford (1878-1969) in 1898, and they had three children, Sherlock, Deford, and Edith Page. He died in 1935.