Augustus Henry Swan was a respected educator and prominent community leader during the post-Emancipation era and the first black person to run for a seat in the House of Assembly.

He was head teacher of the Lane School on East Broadway, Pembroke, which was one of the first two schools the Anglican Church built for newly freed slaves.He also served on the executive of three of several self-help organizations that flourished in Bermuda after the abolition of slavery. A staunch Anglican as well, he led fund-raising efforts to build churches and church-run schools.

Swan’s community work began a year after Emancipation in 1835 when he became Secretary of the Coloured Young Men’s Society at age 15. He helped to organise the Island’s early Emancipation Day celebrations.

In 1843, he was secretary of the Useful Knowledge Library, a circulating library founded in the same year by Robert Packwood.

In 1848, he was secretary of the Young Men’s Friendly Institution, founded by Richard Tucker in 1832, which was instrumental in winning freedom for a group of American slaves who landed in Bermuda in 1835 aboard the ship Enterprise.

A man whose energy seemingly knew no bounds, in 1844, Swan organised the black community’s first contribution to the building fund of Trinity Church, the forerunner of the Anglican Cathedral, raising both cash and pledges of donated labour from 94 people.

Swan owned a dry goods store in Hamilton, which had an outlet in Flatts, as well as two substantial properties in Hamilton. One was located on Elliott Street.

Education

He was born in 1820, the son of Peter and Letitia Swan and had an older brother William Henry Swan, who was born in 1807. In 1846, he married Susan Bean Trott (born circa 1823) of Hamilton Parish. They had four children.

Writing in Heritage, Dr. Kenneth Robinson said Swan “appears to have had a very superior education and to have been an unusually apt student.” He had even received formal training for his career, which was very unusual back then, having studied at the National School in England.

Swan began teaching at The Lane School the year it opened in 1836 and won widespread praise for his abilities, from the Governor on down.

The emancipation of slaves in Bermuda and other parts of the British Empire in August 1834 triggered concerns within church and political circles in Britain for their educational welfare, both religious and secular.

Funds were donated by British church organisations and distributed to local clergy. In Bermuda, Archdeacon Aubrey Spencer led the way. In August 1835, Spencer announced that he had received funds from the British-based Society for the Propagation of the Gospel to build schools and chapels and for teachers’ salaries.

The Lane School and Paget Glebe were the first of seven schools built for freed slaves following Emancipation. Others were Southampton Glebe and schools in Warwick, St. George’s, Hamilton Parish and St David’s. (The glebe schools were on church property. By 1840, 16 schools for poor children, black and white, had been built.)

Anglican

Classes were overseen by the Anglican minister for the parish, while the curriculum and quality of instruction were assessed by Schools Committees, whose members were drawn from both houses of the legislature.

The Lane School served students from Pembroke and Devonshire. For the first two years of its existence, Swan shared teaching duties with British soldier Jeremiah Corcoran, who was subsequently transferred to Paget Glebe.

While teaching together, Swan and Corcoran organised the Association of Pembroke and Devonshire Parishes as a vehicle for raising additional funds for the school.

Swan remained schoolmaster for nearly 10 years. By 1838, the Lane had the largest enrolment of any school with 165 day and 50 evening students.

Subjects included English grammar, spelling, geography, arithmetic and geometry. The school had ample supplies, and Swan employed “a respectable woman” to teach girls sewing, the School Committee for the Central District noted in a report following an inspection in August 1845.

The Committee also said Swan had to contend with irregular attendance, but “found the pupils pursuing their usual studies with much diligence.”

Swan came in for his share of praise — student responses to questions to various subjects “reflect great credit on the teacher,” the Committee said.

Library

The Lane School was used for other purposes as well. The Useful Knowledge Library, of which Swan was secretary and librarian, was started on the premises with 111 books and nearly 80 subscribers, black and white. Meetings of the Young Men’s Friendly Institution were also held at the school.

Swan put in nearly 10 years at the Lane School. He resigned in February 1846 and opened his own school later that year. He announced his intention to start a “seminary” at his house in a Royal Gazette ad in November 1845.

He said the school would have “a very limited number of children and strict attention would be paid to their moral and religious training.” He was also considering having classes for adults. Swan’s school was in existence at least until August 1847.

Swan, who was one of the first black Bermudians to become eligible for jury duty, became the first black person to run for Parliament in November1849. He failed to win a seat, attracting only 21 votes, as compared with 50, 56 and 63 for the other candidates.

Shopkeeper

Just why he offered himself as a candidate is a mystery. One month before the election, he put up his two properties for sale or rent, along with a sailboat and a carriage, because he was moving to Turks and Caicos.

Little is known about his businesses. But he was a shopkeeper in 1849 because a series of newspaper ads that year announced the arrival of ladies, gents and children’s shoes from London in his Hamilton store, and a sale of everything from buttons to tooth brushes at his Flatts outlet.

In 1850, Swan moved to Turks and Caicos with his wife and son Adolphus, and daughters Laura and Caroline, who was born in June of that year. Their fourth child Theodore was born in Turks and Caicos in 1860.

Nothing is known about his career in Turks and Caicos or how long he lived there — historian Henry Wilkinson writes in Bermuda from Sail to Steam that Swan was “a stipendiary magistrate”. He also suggests that frustration with unmotivated students was the reason he left the Lane, although Kenneth Robinson speculates it may have been his “meager” salary of £30 per year or irregular pay.

Baptised

Swan had returned to Bermuda by 1863 — his son Theodore, then three-years-old, was baptised that year at Pembroke Parish church.

The Swans appear to have moved into the home of Swan’s brother William. Swan no longer owned property. The house and lot of land he had put on the market before leaving for Turks and Caicos had not sold three years later. They were finally seized and sold at a public auction in December 1854.

The family was decimated by a string of deaths after their return to Bermuda. Susan Swan died in January 1865 at age 42. Then Augustus and Susan’s daughter Caroline died in June 1866 at age 16.

A mere six months later, on November 27, 1866, Augustus Swan himself died of tuberculosis, one month shy of his 46th birthday. He was buried at Pembroke parish church.

His death was noted in The Royal Gazette, which listed his survivors as an aged mother, a son and daughter, but gave no names. Then in April 1867, William Swan died at age 59 years, followed by his mother Letitia in June the same year. She was 90.

Properties

Records give no additional clues about Augustus and Susan’s sons Adolphus and Theodore, but their surviving daughter Laura married William Crawford in 1873. They had five children, including Edith Crawford, who followed her grandfather into the teaching profession.

The Augustus Swan story is one that cries out for additional research. Contemporary accounts and assessments by 20th-century historians leave no doubt as to his capabilities, although the loss of his properties suggests he may have fallen on hard times after he left Bermuda.

Still his contribution was noteworthy. He was one of the leaders who emerged in the black Bermudian community in the first decades after Emancipation who devoted their energies to building organisations aimed at education, self-improvement and moral uplift.

As for the Lane School, it is not known how long it was in operation. Its appearance on the 1901 Savage map indicates it was still a school up to that year.

Few in Bermuda were aware that the Lane School building was still in existence until 2009 when owners Moonray Manor Trust applied to the Department of Planning to have Moonray Manor, located on the waterfront next to Fidelity International on East Broadway, re-zoned.The application was rejected and the property was reclassified as a Grade III listed building.

In August 2014, work got under way to restore Moonray Manor. The original walls of the building will be incorporated into a new two-bedroom cottage.