Dr. Mary Alice Swayze (1845–1925)

A woman physician in anthracite-era Pottsville — an 1873 degree from the Woman’s Medical College, some thirty-seven years in practice, and the vice-presidency of the county medical society. Markers: ★ verified · ✔ confirmed · ✎ corrects a common error · ⚑ open/caution.

Mary Alice Swayze was a physician in Mahanoy City and then Pottsville from 1874 to 1911 — a graduate of the Woman’s Medical College of Pennsylvania, in Philadelphia, in the class of 1873, vice-president of the Schuylkill County Medical Society, and president of the county Woman’s Christian Temperance Union. ✔ Her 1925 obituary remembered her as “one of the first woman doctors in Pennsylvania and one of the first graduates of the Women’s Medical College of Philadelphia.” ✔

A Montour County farm family

Swayze was born on August 12, 1845, at Sharp Ridge, in Montour County, Pennsylvania — the youngest of five children on her parents’ farm. ✔ Her father, Robert Beavers Swayze (1809–1902), and her mother, Sarah (McMurtrie) Swayze (1812–1856), were both born near Hope, in Warren County, New Jersey, and came early in their married life to the Pennsylvania farm — land then in Columbia County, which the county’s division made part of the new county of Montour. ✔ Her mother died of typhoid fever when Mary Alice was still a little girl. ✔ Her father — a farmer who moved into the merchant trade in Mahanoy City around the opening of the Civil War — later settled at Rohrsburg in Columbia County. ✔

The household had a physician in it before her. Her eldest brother, Dr. George B. H. Swayze (1833–1914), took his degree from Jefferson Medical College in 1859, served as an army surgeon, practiced in Mahanoy City, and founded and first edited the town’s first newspaper — the Mahanoy Gazette, begun in 1865. ✔ Her brothers Clark M. and Theodore P. Swayze were merchants, and her sister Lizzie (Ann Elizabeth) married Perry D. Black of Rohrsburg. ✔

Woman’s Medical College, class of 1873

Swayze prepared at Wyoming Seminary in Kingston and Dickinson Seminary in Williamsport, then read medicine “under the preceptorship of her eldest brother, George B. H. Swayze, M. D., in Philadelphia.” ✔ That was her college’s own stated requirement: a candidate for the degree had to show three years’ study of medicine, and to have “been during that time the private pupil for two years at least, of a respectable practitioner of Medicine.” ★ George settled in Philadelphia in 1871, and the Woman’s Medical College of Pennsylvania’s printed list for the same 1871–72 session records her among its matriculants — “Swayze, Mary A.,” a resident of Philadelphia. ✔

She graduated in the class of 1873. The year is fixed by the college’s own alumnae catalogue — a roll that opens with the class of 1852 and records, under its “Year of Graduation” column, 1873 for Swayze, with her thesis subject: “Fever” — and the 1893 county biography gives the same. ★ Her thesis itself, required of each candidate in “her own composition and penmanship,” survives in the college’s records at Drexel University: “A thesis on fever,” thirty-five manuscript pages. ✔ The 1906 American Medical Directory prints her degree year as 1895 — in an entry that misspells her “Swayse,” in a first edition whose own foreword owns to “many contradictions and discrepancies” — where the college’s roll and the earlier records give 1873. ✎

A practice in the anthracite country

Mahanoy City was familiar ground: she had lived there in her father’s household before she took up medicine. ✔ After a term’s hospital appointment in connection with her alma mater, Swayze began to practice in 1874, first at Mahanoy City — her brother George’s old ground — and two years later moved her office to Pottsville, the county seat, where she stayed for the rest of her career. ✔

She first appears in Boyd’s Pottsville directory in 1877, at 10 North Second Street; by 1879 she was at 204 West Mahantongo Street, her bolded directory line advertising that “diseases of women and children receive special attention”; by 1883, at 310 West Mahantongo. ★ In the 1879–80 edition’s classified list of physicians she is the only woman among eleven in Pottsville. ★ The 1893 cyclopedia describes the whole as “an extensive general and special practice in women’s and children’s diseases.” ✔ In the spring of 1886 she removed to 224 North Second Street — the Pottsville Republican announced the move that March — and the directories carry her at that corner down to the 1911 edition. ★ The county’s own register carries her too: the prothonotary’s roll of physicians, reproduced in the 1893 cyclopedia, lists “Mary A. Swayze” of Pottsville. ✔

That house was the corner at Second and Race the press called “the Strouse residence” — the home of the congressman Myer Strouse, who died there in 1878, eight years before Swayze took it. ✔ It was her office and her residence in one for twenty-five years; the house has a page of its own. ✔

The medical society and the temperance union

At its annual meeting in Grand Army Hall, the Schuylkill County Medical Society elected her vice-president for 1885 — the second office, after the president, Dr. G. F. Brendle of Mahanoy City. ★ The Pottsville Republican of January 7, 1885 printed the slate: six officers, from a meeting of physicians “from all parts of the county,” and she the only woman among them. ✔

By then she held the wider credential as well: the printed Transactions of the Medical Society of the State of Pennsylvania carry her as a member of the state body from 1877. ★ When the society met at Lancaster in May 1881, the Lancaster Daily Intelligencer listed “the ladies members of and attending the state medical society” — six women from the whole of Pennsylvania, “Mary Alice Swayze” of Pottsville among them. ★ Two years later the Transactions register her in the Schuylkill County delegation at the thirty-fourth annual session, at Norristown in May 1883. ★ The 1893 county cyclopedia adds that she was elected to membership in the county society, appointed to prepare papers on professional topics, and made “delegate to and member of” the state society. ✔ It also set her career in a wider frame: the “very kindly recognition of Dr. M. Alice Swayze by the generous-minded profession in Schuylkill county,” it wrote, “has done much to disperse the narrow prejudice which medical men formerly entertained toward women physicians.” ✔

The Pottsville Republican, when she left the city in 1911, described her as “one of the organizers and … one of the prime movers in the Women’s Christian Temperance Union in Pottsville,” and recorded that she had been “for many years president of the county union of the W. C. T. U.” ★ Her obituary put it more briefly fourteen years later: “a member of the Schuylkill County Medical association and president of the Schuylkill County W. C. T. U.” ✔

Leaving Pottsville

In the spring of 1911, after some thirty-seven years in practice, Swayze gave up her Pottsville office and sold her house on North Second Street to P. J. Joyce. ★ The Pottsville Republican of April 27 ran the news under the headline “Dr. Swayze to Leave Pottsville”: she was bound “for the West,” “her route will lay straight to Iowa,” and it was “with deep regret … that she leaves her many Pottsville and Schuylkill County friends.” ★

✎ Her later record is Pennsylvania, not Iowa. Her own 1925 obituary traces her from the end of her Pottsville practice to Philadelphia, where she lived with her brother Dr. George Swayze until his death in 1914, and then to Bloomsburg and the household of her brother Theodore. ⚑

Family

Her parents were Robert Beavers Swayze (1809–1902) and Sarah (McMurtrie) Swayze (1812–1856). ✔ Her four elder siblings were Dr. George B. H. Swayze (1833–1914), the physician who was also her preceptor; Clark M. Swayze (1835–1907); Theodore P. Swayze (1838–1925), with whom she later made her home at Bloomsburg; and Ann Elizabeth “Lizzie” (Swayze) Black (1841–1909), who married Perry D. Black. ✔ The life-dates are the cemetery record’s; the 1893 county cyclopedia names the same five children. ✔

Marriage, death, and burial

Swayze married once, and late. In 1921, at about seventy-five, she married Rev. John M. Sampson of Ronceverte, West Virginia — “formerly a railroad engineer, and later a minister,” lastly the pastor of the Salunga Methodist Episcopal Church in Lancaster County — and he died the next year. ✔ Her whole practice had been under her own name; his obituary, in June 1922, still named “his wife, who was Dr. Alice Swayze.” ✔

Mary Alice Swayze Sampson died at Lancaster on December 20, 1925, of heart failure. ★ Her obituary ran the next day in the Lancaster and York papers, opening with “one of the first woman doctors in Pennsylvania.” ✔ She was buried at Old Rosemont Cemetery in Bloomsburg, in Columbia County — where her sister Ann Elizabeth already lay, and a county line from the farm at Sharp Ridge where her life had begun eighty years before. ✔

---

Sources

• Biographical and Portrait Cyclopedia of Schuylkill County, Pennsylvania (Wiley & Ruoff, 1893)
  License: public-domain

  Her sketch (pp. 587–589): born at her parents' farm in Montour County; father Robert Beaver Swayze [the cyclopedia's spelling; the gravestone reads Beavers] and mother Sarah McMurtrie, both born near Hope, Warren County, N.J. ("the former in A.D. 1809, the latter in 1812"); the parents "early in their married life removed to the farm they had purchased in Pennsylvania, at that time located in Columbia county, but which, by division of said county, became the new county of Montour"; the mother "died of typhoid fever while the latter was yet a little girl"; the father, a farmer, "about the time of the beginning of the war of the rebellion … embarked in mercantile pursuits in the … town of Mahanoy City," and later removed to Rohrsburg, Columbia County; educated at Dickinson Seminary, Williamsport; "she began the study of medicine under the preceptorship of her eldest brother, George B. H. Swayze, M. D., in Philadelphia; and in due course of hard study she graduated at the Women's Medical College of Philadelphia class of 1873." On the siblings (p. 589): "the eldest, Dr. George B. H., graduate of Jefferson Medical College, class of 1859; did surgeon's service in the army, subsequently practiced in Mahanoy City, was the promoter and first editor-in-chief of the first newspaper published in Mahanoy City — The Mahanoy Gazette; and is now a successful practitioner and medical writer in Philadelphia"; "Clark M., formerly a merchant in Schuylkill and Luzerne counties"; "Theodore P., merchant and fruit grower, at Berwick, Columbia county"; "one sister, Lizzie A., the wife of Perry D. Black." The Mahanoy City chapter repeats the paper: "its first newspaper, The Mahanoy Gazette, which was founded in 1865 by Dr. G. H. B. Swayze" [the chapter transposes his initials]. On her career: "After the professional experience of successfully filling a hospital appointment in connection with her Alma Mater in Philadelphia for one term, she in 1874 began an extensive general and special practice in women's and children's diseases … in Schuylkill county, locating her office and home meanwhile in Mahanoy City, where she had previously resided with her father"; "Two years later she removed to Pottsville." On her standing: "promptly elected to membership in the honored Schuylkill County Medical Society, appointed to prepare papers on professional topics, made delegate to and member of the State Medical Society of Pennsylvania, and elected vice-president of the Schuylkill County Medical Society"; "The very kindly recognition of Dr. M. Alice Swayze by the generous-minded profession in Schuylkill county has done much to disperse the narrow prejudice which medical men formerly entertained toward women physicians." The county prothonotary's physician-registration list (p. 147; the roll runs June 25, 1881–Aug. 7, 1893, and her registration stands under its first year, 1881) records "Mary A. Swayze," Pottsville. Despite the book's title, her entry carries no portrait engraving.

• Woman's Medical College of Pennsylvania — Annual Announcement, 1885 (alumnae catalogue)
  License: public-domain

  The "Catalogue of the Alumnæ," first column headed "Year of Graduation": "1873 Swayze, Mary Alice … Pennsylvania, … Fever" — her graduation year and thesis subject. The roll opens with the class of 1852 and runs continuously; her row carries no married-name insertion and no deceased mark. The same roll lists the college's 1869 graduate Clara Swain, confirming it as the authoritative graduate list.

• Woman's Medical College of Pennsylvania — Twenty-third Annual Announcement, session of 1872–73
  License: public-domain

  The "List of Matriculants" (headed "Session 1871-72," one undivided alphabetical list with no class designations — Clara Marshall, class of 1875, appears in the same list) names "Swayze, Mary A., … Philadelphia." The same announcement's "Requirements for Graduation": the candidate "must have been engaged in the study of Medicine three years, and been during that time the private pupil for two years at least, of a respectable practitioner of Medicine"; must have attended two courses of lectures in seven subjects including "Obstetrics and Diseases of Women and Children"; and "must also present the graduation fee, and a thesis on some medical subject of her own composition and penmanship."

• 'Schuylkill County Medical Society,' Pottsville Republican, January 7, 1885, p. 4 (Newspapers.com) [subscription]
  License: publisher

  The society's annual meeting at Grand Army Hall, with "a goodly attendance of physicians from all parts of the county"; the officers elected for the year: "President—Dr. G. F. Brendle, of Mahanoy City. Vice President—Dr. M. A. Swayze, of Pottsville." She is the only woman among the six named officers.

• 'Dr. M. A. Swayze will remove …,' Pottsville Republican, March 2, 1886, p. 4 (Newspapers.com) [subscription]
  License: publisher

  "Dr. M. A. Swayze will remove April 1st, to 224 N. Second St., formerly the Strouse residence, two squares from Market St." — dates her move to 224 North Second Street to April 1, 1886, and identifies the corner house as the late congressman Myer Strouse's former residence.

• 'Dr. Swayze to Leave Pottsville,' Pottsville Republican, April 27, 1911, p. 4 (Newspapers.com) [subscription]
  License: publisher

  "Dr. M. Alice Swayze, who has made Pottsville her home for many years … intends to leave Pottsville for the West … her route will lay straight to Iowa. Dr. Swayze was one of the organizers and is one of the prime movers in the Women's Christian Temperance Union in Pottsville … She was for many years president of the county union of the W. C. T. U. … it is with deep regret … that she leaves her many Pottsville and Schuylkill County friends … Dr. Swayze has sold her residence, on N. Second Street, to P. J. Joyce."

• Boyd's Pottsville Directory, 1877–78 (Internet Archive)
  License: public-domain

  Her first Pottsville listing (p. 210): "Swayze Mary Alice, physician, 10 N Second, h do." She is absent from the 1867–1875 editions (the Swa- runs are legible in each — Swalm, Swartz, Swaving all present), and is listed continuously thereafter: 204 W. Mahantongo in 1879–80 and 1881–82; 310 W. Mahantongo in 1883–84 and 1885–86; 224 N. Second from 1887–88 through the 1911 edition ("Swayze M. Alice, physician, 224 N 2d, h do"). By the 1913 edition the 224 N. Second address carries other households (the Devitts, with a third resident).

• Boyd's Pottsville Directory, 1879–80 (Internet Archive)
  License: public-domain

  Her bolded directory line at 204 W. Mahantongo: "SWAYZE MARY ALICE, physician; diseases of women and children receive special attention; 204 W Mahantongo, h do" — her advertised specialty. The same edition's classified list of physicians carries her as the only woman among eleven Pottsville physicians.

• Boyd's Directory of Pottsville, Ashland and Tamaqua, 1883–84 (Internet Archive)
  License: public-domain

  "Swayze Mary Alice, physician, 310 W Mahantongo, h do" — her third Pottsville address. The 1885–86 edition (archive.org/details/boydsdirectoryof0000whar_g7s8) repeats it: "SWAYZE MARY ALICE, physician, 310 W Mahantongo." With the 1887–88 edition's "224 N 2d," the directories bracket the April 1886 removal the Republican announced.

• Transactions of the Medical Society of the State of Pennsylvania, Thirty-fourth Annual Session, Norristown, May 9–11, 1883 (vol. XV)
  License: public-domain

  The session minutes: "The Permanent Secretary read the list of delegates and members. The following is the entire list as registered:—" — and under "Schuylkill County," among the delegates (above the separate "Permanent Member:—" subheading), "Mary ALICE SWAYZE, Pottsville." She also appears in the volume's alphabetical member list and its Pottsville roll of county-society members.

• Transactions of the Medical Society of the State of Pennsylvania, 1896 (Forty-sixth Annual Session volume)
  License: public-domain

  The Schuylkill County roll: "Swayze, M. Alice, Pottsville [1877]" — under the volume's printed key, "(A date in brackets signifies the date of membership in the State Society.)" The volume's narrative restates the convention: "The permanent members were marked in the county lists by the date of their membership in the State body."

• 'Female Physicians,' Lancaster Daily Intelligencer, May 12, 1881, p. 3 (Chronicling America, Library of Congress)
  License: public-domain

  Printed while the Medical Society of the State of Pennsylvania was in annual session at Lancaster (the same issue's p. 2 carries the session proceedings): "Female Physicians. Following are the ladies members of and attending the state medical society: Agues [Agnes] Kemp, Uarrisburg [Harrisburg]; Margaret A. Cleaves, Uarrisburg; Frances N. Baker, Media; Mary Stinson, Norristown; Alice Bennett, Norristown; Mary Alice Swayze, Pettsvillc [Pottsville]." — six women named for the whole state, Swayze among them (bracketed OCR corrections; verified against the ALTO page text). Also mirrored at the Pennsylvania Newspaper Archive (Penn State).

• 'Our Mortuary Recordings' — Rev. John M. Sampson obituary, Mount Joy Bulletin (Lancaster County), June 21, 1922, p. 5 (Pennsylvania Newspaper Archive, Penn State)
  License: public-domain

  "Rev. John M. Sampson, pastor of the Salunga M. E. church and a resident of Lancaster for the past 16 months, died Tuesday at the General Hospital of meningitis, after an illness of some weeks, aged 73 years" [the sentence spans an OCR column break, reassembled from the page text]. "He was born August 20, 1848 at Grafton, West Virginia … a member of both the Central Pennsylvania and Philadelphia Conferences … served successfully as pastor of a number of churches in both conferences and also in West Virginia. He was a member of Hinton Lodge, No. 62, F. and A. M., of Hinton, West Virginia. He is survived by his wife, who was Dr. Alice Swayze of Bloomsburg, before marriage and sons and daughters of a former marriage. The remains were taken to Huntington, West Virginia, for burial." Salunga is a Lancaster County village — his pastorate and residence place the couple in Lancaster County from early 1921. The Bulletin of Wednesday, June 21 says "died Tuesday"; Find a Grave's memorial for him (no. 63411903) gives June 13, 1922 — also a Tuesday — so the precise day is left unstated here.

• Dr. Mary Alice Swayze Sampson — Find a Grave Memorial no. 192489833 (Old Rosemont Cemetery, Bloomsburg)
  License: reference

  Records her dates (b. Aug. 12, 1845; d. Dec. 20, 1925, aged 80, Lancaster) and burial at Old Rosemont Cemetery, Bloomsburg, and transcribes her obituary in full: "One of the first woman doctors in Pennsylvania and one of the first graduates of the Women's Medical College of Philadelphia, Mrs. Alice Swayze Sampson, M. D., died … of heart failure … She was born at Sharp Ridge, Montour county … educated at the Wyoming Seminary, Kingston, and the Dickinson Seminary, Williamsport, going from the last named school to the Women's Medical College. She began to practice medicine at Mahanoy City, later establishing her office in Pottsville … She was a member of the Schuylkill County Medical association and president of the Schuylkill County W. C. T. U. After ending her practice of medicine, she lived with her brother, Dr. George H. Swayze, Philadelphia, until his death, and then made her home with another brother, Theodore Swayze, Bloomsburg. In 1921, she married Rev John M. Sampson, of Roncerverte [Ronceverte], W. Va., formerly a railroad engineer, and later a minister, who supplied charges in this county until his death in 1922." The transcription names no age at death (the "aged 80" is the memorial's own field) and no children among her survivors. The obituary was published December 21, 1925 in the Lancaster New Era (p. 3), the Lancaster Daily Intelligencer (p. 2), the Lancaster News-Journal (p. 22), and the York Gazette and Daily (p. 6), each verified on Newspapers.com.

• Swayze family — Find a Grave memorials (Sharp Ridge Cemetery, Montour County; Old Rosemont Cemetery, Bloomsburg)
  License: reference

  Her father Robert Beavers Swayze's memorial (no. 140944348, Sharp Ridge Cemetery) cross-links the family and fixes their life-dates: father Robert Beavers Swayze (1809–1902); mother Sarah Curliss McMurtrie Swayze (1812–1856, no. 140944370, Sharp Ridge); and the five children — Dr. George Banghart Henry Swayze (1833–1914, no. 51377288, Mount Vernon, Philadelphia), Clark McMurtrie Swayze (1835–1907, no. 51377632, West Laurel Hill), Theodore Paul Swayze (1838–1925, no. 149945737, Pine Grove, Berwick), Ann Elizabeth Swayze Black (1841–1909, no. 192490011, Old Rosemont, Bloomsburg), and Mary Alice (no. 192489833, Old Rosemont). Of the family, only her sister Ann Elizabeth shares her cemetery. George's memorial transcribes his Philadelphia Inquirer obituary of Aug. 24, 1914, which confirms Jefferson 1859, his 1862 appointment as an acting army surgeon, the Mahanoy City weekly he helped start and edited, and "He came to Philadelphia in 1871." Her husband's memorial (Rev. John M. Sampson, 1848–1922, no. 63411903) records his death at Lancaster on June 13, 1922. User-contributed but internally cross-linked; the dated obituary memorials (Mary Alice, George, Clark) are consistent with period death notices.

• Benjamin Franklin Swasey, Genealogy of the Swasey Family (Cleveland, 1910), p. 387 (HathiTrust, public domain)
  License: public-domain

  "5. Mary Alice, b. at Sharp Ridge, Pa., Aug. 12, 1845; unm. She resides at Pottsville, Pa., where she is in practice of medicine." — an independent printed record of her exact birth date, and of her unmarried, still-practicing status as of 1910. The same page gives "Ann Elisabeth, b. Feb. 12, 1840, at Sharp Ridge" where the cemetery record reads 1841, and places Theodore at Berwick in 1910; the volume's portrait plates include her brother George B. H. Swayze but not her.

• American Medical Directory, 1906 (American Medical Association)
  License: public-domain

  Lists "Swayse, Alice M.—Pa.7,'95." under Pottsville — the surname misspelled — with the college code "Pa.7"; the directory's own key gives "Pa.7 = Woman's Medical College of Pennsylvania." Its degree year is given as "'95," where the college's own rolls and the 1893 county cyclopedia give 1873. The first edition's foreword concedes its own reliability: "Many contradictions and discrepancies have been found, which have been corrected so far as time would permit," and "No one can better realize the shortcomings of this volume than those who have labored on it."

• Mary A. Swayze, 'A thesis on fever' (1873) — Woman's Medical College/Medical College of Pennsylvania records, Drexel University
  License: reference

  The college's archival records, held at Drexel University, catalog her manuscript graduation thesis: "A thesis on fever," Swayze, Mary A. (Mary Alice), 1873 — 35 pages, 21×28 cm, in the collection "Theses of the Female/Woman's Medical College of Pennsylvania." The manuscript is digitized but not publicly viewable.

Frequently asked

Was Mary Alice Swayze the first woman doctor in Schuylkill County?

Her 1925 obituary remembered her as "one of the first woman doctors in Pennsylvania and one of the first graduates of the Women's Medical College of Philadelphia." None of the sources gathered here calls her the first woman physician in Schuylkill County specifically. What the record does establish is that she practiced in the county from 1874; that the state medical society's printed rolls carry her as a member from 1877 — one of just six women a Lancaster paper listed as "members of and attending" the state society in 1881; and that she was the only woman among the six officers the Schuylkill County Medical Society elected in 1885, when it chose her as its vice-president.

Did Mary Alice Swayze really move to Iowa?

In April 1911 the Pottsville Republican reported that she was leaving Pottsville "for the West" and that "her route will lay straight to Iowa," where she meant to make her home. Her later record, however, is entirely Pennsylvania. Her 1925 obituary traces her from Pottsville to Philadelphia — where she lived with her brother Dr. George Swayze until his death in 1914 — and then to Bloomsburg, with her brother Theodore; she married in 1921 and died at Lancaster in 1925, and is buried in Bloomsburg. Whatever came of the 1911 plan, she did not settle or die in Iowa.

Where did Mary Alice Swayze study medicine?

She graduated from the Woman's Medical College of Pennsylvania, in Philadelphia, in the class of 1873 — the year recorded in the college's own alumnae catalogue, which also gives her thesis subject, "Fever," and repeated in the 1893 county cyclopedia; the college's Annual Announcement lists her among the matriculants of the 1871–72 session. Before medical school she attended Wyoming Seminary in Kingston and Dickinson Seminary in Williamsport, and she read medicine under her elder brother, Dr. George B. H. Swayze. The 1906 American Medical Directory gives her degree year as 1895, where the college's own records give 1873.

Where was Dr. Swayze's office in Pottsville?

At four addresses in turn. She first appears in Boyd's Pottsville directory in 1877 at 10 North Second Street; by 1879 she was at 204 West Mahantongo Street, and by 1883 at 310 West Mahantongo. In the spring of 1886 she removed to 224 North Second Street — the corner house at Second and Race that the press called "the Strouse residence" — and the directories carry her there down to the 1911 edition — the year she sold the house and left Pottsville.

What kind of medicine did Dr. Swayze practice?

A general practice with a stated emphasis: her 1879 directory line advertises that "diseases of women and children receive special attention." Her thesis subject at the Woman's Medical College, recorded on the college's 1885 alumnae catalogue, was "Fever" — and the thirty-five-page manuscript itself survives in the college's records at Drexel University.

Did Dr. Swayze ever marry?

Once, and late in life. In 1921, at about seventy-five, she married Rev. John M. Sampson, of Ronceverte, West Virginia — a former railroad engineer turned minister — who died the following year. Through her roughly thirty-seven-year medical career she was unmarried, and she practiced and is remembered under her own name, Dr. Swayze.