Title: Enid Bancroft Sutton (Swan) Papers, 1915-1983, n.d.

ID: RG 30/465

Extent: 3.27 Linear Feet

Predominant Dates: 1915-1917

Enid Bancroft Sutton was born on January 27, 1891, in Nuevo Laredo, Mexico, where her father, Warner Perrin Sutton, served as Consul-general. Her mother was Mary Lois Andrews. Enid’s childhood years were divided between Saugatuck, Michigan and Washington, D.C. One brother and two of her sisters attended Oberlin College before her. Enid earned an AB in English Literature in 1915, and a master’s degree in English at Oberlin in 1916. During the First World War Enid served in the Red Cross.

In the summer of 1915 Enid took an ecology course from Professor Lynds Jones, the first of his many summer courses involving trips to the American West to study geology, flora and fauna, particularly birds. Students on these trips kept detailed journals of their observations and took photographs as fulfillment of their course requirements.

In 1917 Enid Sutton married Wilbur Fridolf Swan, an Oberlin graduate in 1910 and a recipient of a master’s degree, also at Oberlin, in 1915. Enid and Wilbur Swan lived in Iowa for their first twenty-five years of marriage. In mid-life, Wilbur left his business career to serve as a minister in the Presbyterian Church. They were in Nebraska for fifteen years of Church service before relocating to Decatur, Illinois for Wilbur’s position as Minister-of-Evangelism at the Westminster Presbyterian Church. Enid did a great deal of calling with him at hospitals and the homes of congregants. After Wilbur’s cataract surgeries, Enid did all the driving. The Swans vacationed in Europe in 1961 and visited the countries of their heritage: Scandinavia, Scotland, England and Wales.

The couple had six children, of which two sons graduated from Oberlin College: Arthur in 1946 and Jon in 1950. Arthur taught for three years in London, and Jon traveled and taught in Switzerland after earning a master’s degree at Harvard. Later he worked at The New Yorker magazine and wrote poetry. The three daughters in the family all served in the war effort during World War II. Zaida was a WAVE stationed in Washington, D.C., and Kristin served as a WASP working as a test pilot at Garden City, Kansas. Felice did research at Harvard Medical School in cancer. The eldest son, Charles, taught for three years in the Presbyterian Community School in Tehran, Iran under the Board of Foreign Missions, then returned to graduate in law at the University of Michigan and worked in the Office of Foreign Buildings in the State Department.

Wilbur Swan died of pneumonia on March 17, 1969. Enid moved to Greenport, New York in 1974 to live with her eldest son’s family. She died on October 11, 1983 in Greenport, survived by five of their six children, eleven grandchildren and eight great-grandchildren.

In a note to Oberlin College from Arthur Swan with an enclosed obituary clipping he states, “One of my mother’s most enduring and meaningful Oberlin experiences took place in the summer of 1915, when she was part of a small group of students, led by Professor Lynds Jones, who enjoyed an adventuresome ecology expedition on the Pacific Coast. Her interest in birds never waned. Her journal and book of photographs taken on the trip continue to fascinate her family.” These items were donated to the Oberlin College Archives in 1994.

On a form sent out by the College to alums and former students before her death, Enid answered the question “What has been the influence of Oberlin on your life?” She answered, “… decidedly for the good (--) one feels ideals are not only immensely worthwhile but the sine qua non of a satisfactory life.”

Sources

Enid Bancroft Sutton Swan student file, Alumni and Former Students Records (RG 28).

Finding guide to the Jones Family Papers (RG 30/107).

Author: Anne Cuyler Salsich

Forms of Material (links to similar genres)

Administrative Information

Scope and Contents:

The Enid Bancroft Sutton (Swan) Papers is a relatively small collection, with most of the material documenting or describing her participation in an ecology course in the summer of 1915, involving a trip to the Pacific Northwest Coast in Washington for the purpose of studying its ecological niche and bird life. The trip was the first of many led by Oberlin Zoology Professor Lynds Jones, who specialized in the study of birds and their migrations. Jones was one of the pioneers in the field of ecology. The collection is valuable for its documentation of ecological zones during their travels, early environmental education, and of members of the Quileute Nation on which the group depended for gaining access by canoe to bird nesting sites on rocky islets off the Pacific Coast.

Series 1. Biographical, holds only two items: a piece in memoriam of Edith Sutton Swan by her daughter Kristin Swan Lent, written in 1983, and a typewritten transcription of excerpts of letters to Enid’s close friend Vera DeLano describing the ecology trip dated 1915-16.

Series 2. Clippings, is one file of three clippings from 1974 on the Pacific Northwest Coast.

Series 3. Ecology Field Trip to the Pacific Northwest Coast, holds Enid’s journal, two photograph albums, and a mounted photograph. Like her fellow students, Enid was required to keep a detailed journal of her observations of flora, fauna, and geological features in environments encountered while on the ecology trip. The other student course materials from ecology trips in the College Archives suggest that a photograph album was also required, and this collection includes two. One of those (album #1) was originally placed with her journal in the Student Papers record group and covers only the ecology trip. The other, unlike album #1, holds captions. It documents the ecology trip but also appears to have been used later to include photographs taken on other trips, such as the photograph taken by a commercial photographer of a group descending the Grand Canyon with a signpost documenting the date in 1917. That album had been placed in the Photograph Albums record group until 2021, when this personal paper group was created for the Enid Bancroft Sutton Swan materials.

Also in the series is one mounted photograph of Enid Sutton paddling a Native American canoe, one of several used by indigenous guides hired to bring the group to otherwise inaccessible islands to study sea birds. The photograph albums include many photographs of the Quileute guides and their community, and of their villages. In some images, burial sites are clearly visible, with exposed remains and objects. In some of those, students are seen irreverently handling them. Enid remarks in a letter that this is patently wrong. These photographs are restricted from photographing or scanning.

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