My Genealogy Hound

J. F. Swearingen, superintendent of the Detroit Sugar Company, at Rochester, Oakland County, was born in Clark County, Illinois, March 9, 1862, and is a son of Dos and Lizzie (Freeland) Swearingen, the former of whom died at the age of 45 years. The latter resides in St. Louis, Missouri.

Mr. Swearingen was educated in the schools of Clark county, Illinois, and has practically taken care of himself since he was 10 years old. He worked on a farm until the age of 20 and then followed various occupations which, led to his traveling over a wide extent of country, including Arkansas, Texas, Colorado and Cuba and other sugar producing countries. In 1884, having in the meantime sufficiently qualified himself, he began work at Topeka, Kansas, as a machinist and engineer. In 1887 in the same city he embarked in the sugar business, but after a year left the city and went to the southwestern part of the State where he engaged in the construction of sugar factories. He continued in this line of business and went to Louisiana, where he worked until 1894. He so thoroughly understood the various possibilities of the sugar business by this time that he went to the sugar plantations of Cuba, but did not stay long on account of the trouble and unsettled conditions there. The succeeding three years he spent as a traveling engineer for a Chicago house and in 1899 he came to Rochester, Oakland County, in the construction gang of the factory of which he is now the competent superintendent. He worked in the plant three years as a machinist and sugar maker, and so efficiently were all his duties performed, that in April, 1902, he was made superintendent of the plant. This is one of the great industries of the section and during the season gives employment to 300 men. Mr. Swearingen’s economical but thoroughly efficient management has given the greatest satisfaction and he has succeeded in increasing the output as well as in adding to the quality of the product.

In 1896 Mr. Swearingen was married to Maud A. Lockard, a native of Fort Scott, Kansas, and they have a little daughter, Lucile.