The Benton Argus called them "one of the oldest and most distinguished families from this section." Almost completely forgotten today, the family lived at "Pine Rest," the old family home above Benton. We are talking about the Swartwout family, descendants from an old Dutch Patroon family, who came to New Amsterdam in the latter part of the 17th century. The Swartwouts were of French Huguenot descent on the maternal side. The grandfather was a professor of French at West Point Military Academy. In any event, the Swartwout family was considered "upper class," wealthy, not like the majority of the families who had to scrounge a living off the land. John Herbert Laubach, for example, remembers Mary and Katheryn Swartwout walking from Benton to their home in the refreshing shade of their parasols.

The subject came up when we were researching the details of the Swartwout Mill, part of the series on mills of the upper Fishingcreek valley. We knew of two sisters, Kate and May, who lived in the Swartwout home until shortly before Mary's passing in 1955. We knew that Katharine Swartwout was 92 when she passed away, and we had heard that of the two sisters, Mary and Katharine, "May" was the worker and "Kate" the overseer.

Bob Sands lived across route 487 when he was growing up in what later was called the "Whitmoyer" house. Bob served as pallbearers for both of the women. The Swartwout house burned to the ground and the only evidence today that a property was ever at that location is a large oil tank above the level of the ground in the approximate location of the former house.

If you look at a map of 1850, like the Cummings' Map of Columbia and Montour Counties, you can see the "The Two Sister's Curve" in the present route 487 just north of the present golf course. Donald Rabb remembers the curve well, since he was a passenger in his father's car when it hit a culvert on that turn. Consider for a moment the difficulty one would encounter in getting a four-year old boy in need of stitches to the hospital in Bloomsburg in 1926!

We found the obituary of Mary Swartwout when she passed away. The Argus reported "Services for Miss Mary Swartwout, 87, born in 1867 and died in February 1955 were held from St. Gabriel's Episcopal Church, at Cole's Creek, with the Rt. Rev. Bishop Thomas Heistand officiating. Interment was made in the Swartwout lot in St. Gabriel's churchyard. Swartwout was a member of St. Gabriel's Church, and throughout her lifetime was active in organizations in that parish. The old house in Benton Township which, until recently, had been in the same family for a century, stands as a mute reminder of the gracious living which took place within its rooms. It was here she was born. She died at the Episcopal Church Home in Shippensburg. There are no survivors."

We'll get into the details of the family, but first lets try to understand the term, "Patroon." The dictionary yields a definition something like, "One who held an estate in land with certain manorial privileges granted under the old Dutch governments of New York and New Jersey (patrons)."

According to http://www.nnp.org/, a "patroonship" was a private farming community. One of the ways that the Dutch tried to settle the wilderness of its New Netherland province was via patroonships. A patroon was akin to a plantation owner. Through the plan, wealthy men in the Netherlands would be given huge tracts of land in this country in exchange for their promise to send at least fifty colonists to settle it. The patroonship system didn't work out very well and had problems from the start. According to the New Netherland Project website, an example of a short-lived patroonships was in the first permanent settlement in what is today New Jersey. In 1630, a patroonship began on both sides of the North River (today known as the Hudson River) just across from Manhattan, at that time the capital of the province. The rich farmland was purchased from the Lenni Lenape Indians.

And in case you are a little rusty on the term "French Huguenot," we are not going to help you out much. We would ask that you turn to the New Netherland Project web site if you want to get into any depth on this subject. We'll sum it up by telling you that the Huguenots who left France during their persecutions emigrated to the Protestant and Eastern Orthodox countries of Europe. They went particularly to Germany, Holland, and England. Huguenot settlers later immigrated into the American colonies directly from France and indirectly from the Protestant countries of Europe. This immigration began before 1685 and continued for over one hundred years. The Huguenots settled along almost the entire Eastern coast of North America, but showed a preference for what are now the states of Massachusetts, New York, Pennsylvania, Virginia, and South Carolina.

The ground on which these mills and the Swartwout house stood was a grant from the Penns to Jonathan Colley, who planted an apple orchard at that spot in 1797. But lets come forward to the 1800 tax rolls. Jonathan Colley and his son-in-law, Jesse Pennington, each owned one-half of a saw mill probably on Fishing Creek but available information is too sketch to be certain. Jonathan sold land to Isaiah Cole, possibly this property. It was not uncommon for saw mills and shingle mills to eventually be converted to grist mills. The original mill was built by Isaiah Cole in 1799 and operated for almost half a century until a cloudburst and flash flood destroyed it in 1848. The mill which became known as the Swartwout Mill was constructed about 1849 about fifty yards below the original and a man by the name of Robbins is credited with having built it. The mill was owned by Isaiah Cole. Later, Bent Cole operated the second mill. "Bent" Cole refers to Thomas Benton Cole, who at one time lived in the stone house next to the present Mill Race Golf Course.

Robert Swartwout purchased the mill and about 150 acres of land in 1858. His brother, John, came from Albany, New York, in 1859 and managed the property. Swartwout sold the mill to Joseph Follmer and there were several sales after.

In 1914, Benton was supplied with electricity by a company of which Charles Bellas was president and manager; C. B. Whitmire, vice president; G. L. Hess, secretary and treasurer. A concrete dam, 280 feet long, had been built by 1914 at the site of the old Swartwout mill, and the powerhouse contained a 75-kilowatt generator, operated by a 100-horsepower turbine.The Benton Electric Company, shown below, provided electricity to Benton until the 1920s when it became the property of the Pennsylvania Power and Light Company.

The Pennsylvania Power & Light Company sold the building to Terrence Smith, who retained the water power. Smith removed the building in 1914, one hundred and fifteen years after the date of the first construction.

Go here if you would like more information about the descendants of the Swartwout Family that landed in Kingston, Ulster, New York, in the year 1652. The family now has members in every state of the Union as well as in Canada and in the Netherlands. Sadly the family in Netherlands has no male heirs to carry the name on, so it rests on the shoulders of those in the United States to carry the name forward.

--In addition to the references shown in this article, additional contributions to this article came from Brad Cole, Helen Gammon and the Columbia County Historical Society publication, "Grist Mills of Columbia Country, Pennsylvania, Part Two."