Hepzibah Swan

Hepzibah Swan (née Clarke) lived in Boston, Massachusetts in the late 18th century/early 19th century. She was a wealthy and well connected heiress who was among the most cosmopolitan, intelligent, and erudite of ladies in Federal Boston. Madame Swan was said to be charismatic, not least because of her wealth but also in good measure because of her effusive personal charm. Lifelong friends included revolutionary war heroes Henry Knox, Henry Jackson, Charles Bulfinch, Sarah Wentworth Apthorp Morton, and Harrison Otis.

In 1776 she married Scotland-born James Swan, and in the course of the marriage had four children: Hepzibah, Christiana, Sarah and James.

With her close friend Sarah Wentworth Aprthorp Morton, they founded the Sans Souci Club in Boston, which revelled without regret. Her estranged husband, James Swan, who lived out his adult life in splendour in a Paris debtors' prison, also sat for his portrait that was painted by Gilbert Stuart. She was to commission a portrait of her longtime companion, General Henry Jackson (1747–1809) who is also buried in the family lot at Forest Hills Cemetery. But while this sophisticated and charming doyenne of Boston society was said to have enjoyed the rapt attention of many, she was also said to be a pendant to no one man in particular, neither in her long and eventful life nor in her soignee portrait.

Swan commissioned several portraits from painter Gilbert Stuart, including one of her husband, and those of her friends Henry Knox and Henry Jackson, and others. Her own portrait was also painted by Stuart, and is now in the collection of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.

Hepzibah and James Swan were both pro French; Mrs. Swan in particular was a devout Francophile all her life. During the war they entertained French naval officers stationed at Newport who brought their ships to Boston for repair, refitting and supplies. On his return to Boston James built a grand countryseat on Dudley Street in Dorchester not far from Royal Governor Shirley’s mansion. Swan had purchased the land in 1781 when he was adjutant general of the Commonwealth. It was a 60-acre estate with a house near the road that the State of Massachusetts had confiscated from Loyalist Nathaniel Hatch. Hatch and 1000 other Tories had fled with the British army to Halifax, Nova Scotia in 1776.

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