By Anne Morrissy
On Friday, Sept. 5, 1890, a beautiful young bride stood beside her fiancé at her parents’ summer cottage on Geneva Lake to exchange vows. The wedding party and the guest list included some of the most prominent Lake Geneva names of the era — Fairbank, Sturges, Rumsey. Other luminaries in attendance included future U.S. Secretary of the Treasury Lyman Gage; James R. Garfield, son of the late U.S. president; and the Chief Justice of Supreme Court, Melville Fuller.
But arguably the most famous person in the room that day was the man who stood at the front to act as the couple’s officiant: The Rev. David Swing. The famous preacher and former minister of Chicago’s Fourth Presbyterian Church had not traveled far to perform the wedding ceremony that afternoon. Since 1884, Rev. Swing had spent summers at his cottage on Buttons Bay in Lake Geneva, a home which eventually came to be named for him: Swinghurst. Rev. Swing built the elegant lake home as a summer sanctuary, a place to escape his fame and the political controversy that had arrived in its wake. Though the reverend only got to spend 11 summers in the house, the beautiful retreat that bore his name would stand on the site for more than a century before succumbing to the wrecking ball in 2022.
PREACHING TO THE MASSES
Today, few people remember Rev. David Swing. However, in the 1870s and 1880s, this Presbyterian minister was just as widely known as famous preachers who came after him: Billy Sunday, Father John Coughlin, the Rev. Martin Luther King. At the height of his career, Rev. Swing routinely preached to a congregation of over 800 people weekly, and his Sunday sermons were widely reprinted in Monday newspapers and read across the country. Friends writing of Swing upon his death in 1894 estimated that “he reached the widest audience yet accorded to any American preacher.”
Chicago playwright and actress Kat Evans researched Swing for her play, “Perseverance of the Saints,” which received a staged reading last spring at the Chicago Temple. Evans explains that Swing was one of the top Presbyterian ministers in the country, at a time when Presbyterianism was a hugely powerful force in America. “In those days, the Presbyterian church was arguably the biggest, richest cultural institution,” she explains.
As a result, Swing became a household name to thousands of people around the country, partly due to the appeal of his sermons. “Swing was great at connecting across disciplines,” Evans explains. “He didn’t have any problem with God manifesting in other languages, in new ideas, in every line of poetry ever written. And it was easy for him to see God in others, whether they were women, or people of other denominations or people worshiping in other languages. This was an important tenet of his faith.”
READY TO IGNITE
Rev. Swing’s ideas were fairly progressive for the era, and they placed him in a branch of his faith known as “New School Presbyterianism.” A schism in the church had led to the establishment of two different branches of Presbyterianism around 1837: Old School and New School. Though the two branches would eventually settle their differences and rejoin together later in the 19th century, the era during and immediately following the Civil War was fraught with contention, and this happened to be when Rev. Swing was reaching the height of his popularity.
He had arrived in Chicago in 1866 from Ohio, accepting an invitation to serve as the minister at a Presbyterian church aligned with the New School. Five years later, in early 1871, that church merged with an established Old School congregation to form Fourth Presbyterian Church, and the new leadership invited Swing to remain as minister. The wealthy members of the newly formed Fourth Presbyterian arranged for the construction of a grand church building just north of the Chicago River, which opened on October 8, 1871. Incredibly, congregants enjoyed just one church service in the new building before it was completely destroyed by the Great Chicago Fire, which started later that same night.
A TRIAL OF FAITH
Undaunted, the church members eventually built another new church building, which opened in January of 1874. (The existing Fourth Presbyterian Church building on Michigan Avenue would be built 40 years later.) It appeared that things were finally looking up for Fourth Presbyterian Church and its minister, David Swing.
However, in a shocking turn of events, a professor at a Chicago seminary publicly accused Rev. Swing of heresy. The serious accusation made against the popular preacher was rooted in the unresolved conflicts between the Old School and the New School of Presbyterianism, and forced Rev. Swing to submit himself to a three-week-long heresy trial in front of his peers in May of 1874. Swing acknowledged that he was preaching a more modern interpretation of Presbyterian doctrine but denied that his teachings constituted heresy. The panel, made up of a large number of Presbyterian ministers from throughout the region, agreed. Swing was acquitted in a 3-to-1 vote.
Unsatisfied, Swing’s accuser appealed the decision, and the battle dragged on for another year. Swing’s health had always been a concern — a friend described him as “being for the greater part of his life a partial invalid” — and eventually the heresy accusations took a further toll. Rather than continue to fight, Swing voluntarily resigned from Fourth Presbyterian in October of 1875 and formed his own, non-denominational congregation called Central Church. Many members of Fourth Presbyterian followed him there.
HALCYON DAYS
After this dramatic period, Swing’s life settled into a quieter routine of reading, writing, preaching, publishing sermons and socializing with friends, including Mary Todd Lincoln, the widow of the late president. Another family that was friendly with Rev. Swing was the George Sturges family, who built their Lake Geneva summer home, Snug Harbor, in 1881 on the site of the present-day Covenant Harbor Bible Camp. Two years later, now a widower, Rev. Swing followed their lead, and purchased two acres of lakefront property overlooking Buttons Bay, where he began building his own summer getaway.
Over the next year, Swing tasked a local builder with creating a 4-bedroom, 3-bathroom Victorian home built in the Queen Anne style of architecture, with an elaborately gabled roof, a bell tower, a 70-foot-wide screened porch overlooking the lake and a widow’s walk from which Rev. Swing would preach to friends and followers on the lawn below.
The home’s interior featured elaborate stained-glass windows, leaded-glass doors and ornate tile work typical of homes of the era. Because of Rev. Swing’s profession, several elements of the home’s design mirrored that of a church, including a large, open hallway leading to the bedrooms, which mimicked a church sanctuary with stained-glass windows on all sides. The home’s first-floor bathroom also featured an unusual sunken tub with a rope ladder to the bottom where the reverend could perform baptisms.
The Rev. Swing moved into the home in 1884, and filled his summers with a handful of lectures, wedding ceremonies, funerals and other official duties, though generally he used the time to relax and host visitors. The Lake Geneva Herald reported that Rev. Swing “never tired of [Lake Geneva’s] beauty, and his handsome house on the south shore was always filled with friends whom he wanted to share with him the delight of a rest at the lake.”
The renowned preacher spent 11 summers at the lake he loved so much. In October of 1894, Rev. Swing died at the age of 67 following a short illness. Leaving the majority of his property to his two daughters, his last will and testament specifically mentioned his beloved summer retreat: “I prefer that they keep the place at Lake Geneva, Wisconsin, and should they not always occupy it, it will bring them a good rental each season.”
STEWARDS OF A NEW GENERATION
Following Swing’s death, ownership of Swinghurst passed first to his youngest daughter, Helen, and her husband, Mason Starring. The home was eventually sold outside of the family, and subsequent owners continued to honor the name, and to preserve the historic details of the home.
In 1985, Marie Kropp Smothers moved into Swinghurst when she met her second husband, Charlie Kropp, who had owned the home since the 1970s. She quickly fell in love with the home’s details and the fascinating history of Rev. Swing. To honor the era that had produced the home, Marie and Charlie began throwing a summer croquet party on the front lawn, requesting that their guests dress entirely in white, in keeping with the tradition of the late 19th century.
The croquet party became a legendary annual event, the guest list a “who’s who” of the lake’s residents, everyone competing to be crowned that year’s champion. At the croquet party in 1988, the hosts surprised their guests by holding their wedding during the party. “The croquet party was just the best time every year,” Marie explains. “Nobody ever missed it. I would get calls in January asking when it would happen that summer so they could save the date.”
Marie and Charlie also put a lot of time and energy into maintaining Swinghurst and updating it for modern living. Working with Ken Etten of Lake Geneva’s McCormick + Etten Architects, they updated the primary bedroom suite and added a modern kitchen and a detached garage building with music studio space. “Everything we did to that house, we wanted it to blend with the original architecture so that you couldn’t tell it was new,” Marie explains. “Even the roof on the garage was designed to perfectly match the gables of the third floor.”
After Charlie’s death in 2004, Marie kept up the house on her own for many years before meeting and falling in love with her third husband, comedian Dick Smothers, who eventually moved into Swinghurst with her. However, in 2020, the couple made the difficult decision to move back to New York state to be closer to Marie’s extended family. “I was heartbroken to leave Lake Geneva, but it was just time,” she explains.
For several years, Marie had quietly looked for a buyer who would honor the home’s history and appreciate its status as one of the five oldest homes still standing on Geneva Lake. However, shortly after she and Smothers left Lake Geneva, the new owner of Swinghurst decided to tear it down. After 137 years, the beautiful Victorian “painted lady” was no more. It was a devastating loss, not just for Marie, but for the many people around the lake who value historic architecture.
The best we can do today is to remember Swinghurst’s charm and honor those who built and stewarded the home throughout its long life on Geneva Lake, starting with a famous Presbyterian minister. The local newspaper, writing of Rev. Swing during his time in Lake Geneva, reminded its readers that “of all those who annually come to Lake Geneva, none have so deep an affection for [it] as Professor Swing.”
