John Augustus Swope

Who was John Augustus Swope?

John Augustus Swope was a Democratic member of the U.S. House of Representatives from Pennsylvania.

John A. Swope was born in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania. He attended the common schools at Gettysburg and Mount St. Mary’s Academy in Emmitsburg, Maryland. He graduated from Princeton College in 1847 and from the medical department of the University of Pennsylvania at Philadelphia, but discontinued the practice of medicine after a few years and engaged in mercantile pursuits in Baltimore, Maryland. He returned to Gettysburg and became president of the Gettysburg National Bank in 1879. He was also engaged in manufacturing and agricultural pursuits.

Swope was elected in 1884 as a Democrat to the Forty-eighth Congress to fill the vacancy caused by the death of William A. Duncan. He was subsequently elected in 1885 to the Forty-ninth Congress to fill the vacancy caused by the death of Mr. Duncan, who had been reelected. He was not a candidate for renomination in 1886.

He moved to Washington, D.C., and engaged in banking until his death there in 1910. He was interred in Evergreen Cemetery in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania.