Swift was born in Amenia, New York, the son of Job Swift and Mary Ann (Sedgwick) Swift.{{cite web|url= http://records.ancestry.com/benjamin_swift_records.ashx?pid=16621377|title=Benjamin Swift|publisher = Ancestry.com.|accessdate= May 6, 2014}} In 1786, at the age of five, he moved with his father to Bennington in the Vermont Republic. He attended the common schools in Bennington before attending Litchfield Law School in 1801.{{cite web|url= http://www.litchfieldhistoricalsociety.org/ledger/students/2519|title=Benjamin Swift|publisher =Litchfield Historical Society.|accessdate= May 6, 2014}} He studied law and was admitted to the bar in 1806. He began the practice of law in Bennigton before moving to Manchester to practice law. In 1809 he moved to St. Albans to practice law. He also engaged in banking and farming in the area.

Political career

He held various political positions in Vermont, and was elected to the Vermont State House in 1825.{{cite book|last=Middlebury College|title=Catalogue of Officers and Students of Middlebury College in Middlebury, Vermont|date=1917|publisher=The College|page=xiv|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=TapBAAAAYAAJ&pg=PR13 }} He served in the State House until 1827. He was then elected to serve Vermont as a National Republican Party candidate in the United States House of Representatives. He served in the Twentieth and the Twenty-first Congresses from March 4, 1827, to March 3, 1831.{{cite book|last=Herringshaw|first=Thomas William|title=Herringshaw's Encyclopedia of American Biography of the Nineteenth Century|date=1904|publisher=American Publishers' Association|page=910|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=Xxg7AQAAMAAJ&pg=PA910 }} While in Congress, he was on the executive committee of the Congressional Temperance Society.{{cite book|last=American Temperance Union|title=Journal of the American Temperance Union, Volumes 1-4|date=1837|publisher=The Union|page=36|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=Xc9OAAAAYAAJ&pg=RA1-PA36 }} He declined renomination.

In 1833 he was elected as an Anti-Jacksonian candidate to the United States Senate, serving from March 4, 1833, to March 3, 1839.{{cite book|last=U.S. Government Printing Office|title=United States Congressional Serial Set|date=1913|publisher=U.S. Government Printing Office|page=[https://archive.org/details/unitedstatescon24conggoog/page/n1041 1039]|url=https://archive.org/details/unitedstatescon24conggoog }} While in the Senate, Swift was a strong opponent of President Andrew Jackson and helped found the Whig Party. Swift was not renominated for a second term in the Senate and returned to St. Albans where he continued to work as a lawyer and farmer until his death. He died on November 11, 1847, in St. Albans, Vermont and is interred in Greenwood Cemetery in St. Albans.{{cite web|url= http://voca58.org/cemeteries/fpcat.php?input=Congressman|title=Prominent People Buried in Vermont |publisher = Vermont Old Cemetery Association.|accessdate= May 6, 2014}}

Family life

Swift married Rebecca Brown on October 26, 1809. They were the parents of nine children: Charles Henry, Cordelia, William, Catherine Sedgwick, Alfred Brown, Jane Harriet, George Sedgwick, Caroline, and Charles Benjamin.

Benjamin Swift

Early life

Political career

Family life

References

Further reading