Life
Fred Swanton was born April 11, 1862 in Brooklyn, New York. His father was Albion Paris Swanton (1826–1911) who traveled to California in 1864, and was then followed by his wife Emily (Parshley) Swanton with Fred in 1866. After living briefly in Pescadero, California they settled in Santa Cruz, California in 1867. Swanton attended public schools and then graduated from Heald Business College in 1881.
He worked as a bookkeeper at various lumber companies in California until 1883, when he and his mother traveled east to visit relatives. He returned with the patent license for the telephone, which he sold through most of California. On December 25, 1884 he married Stanley Hall in Santa Cruz. He operated a hotel called the Swanton House with his father and ran Knight's Opera House theater. The hotel was the tallest building in the city when it was built. It burned down May 30, 1887, and he started a livery business called Bonner Stables, and then a store called the Palace of Pharmacy, and briefly owned a billboard business. In October 1889 he sold those businesses, and with Dr. H. H. Clark started the first electric company in the area. He developed the Santa Cruz Electric Railway which ran cars from the beach to Santa Cruz and the Santa Cruz-Capitola Railroad to the new resort of Capitola, California to the south. In 1900 he invested in the Klondike Gold Rush, but by then the profits had been made. He also dabbled in oil fields and a chromite mine.
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