Robert R. Swart

Robert R. Swart was born in 1840 in Montgomery County, New York.

Robert left New York and had settled in western Michigan by the time war had broken out. (In 1860 there was one Nathan Swart living in Sebawa, Ionia County.)

He stood 6’”6 with blue eyes, light hair and a light complexion and was a 21-year-old farmer probably living in Ionia County when he enlisted as First Corporal in Company E on May 13, 1861. (He was probably related to Martin Swart who also enlisted in Company E.) Robert was reported as a Sergeant absent sick in the hospital from July of 1862 through November, and was discharged at the general hospital in York, Pennsylvania on December 2, 1862, for varicocele and dilatation of the heart.

It is unknown if Robert returned to Michigan after his discharge from the arm. He was in Avoca, New York where he reentered the service as a private on September 2, 1864, in Company G, One hundred eighty-ninth New York infantry, and was mustered in on October 1. He was mustered out on May 30, 1865 in Washington, DC.

After the war Robert returned once again to New York where he was living in 1889 when he applied for and received a pension (no. 531473) for his service in both Michigan and New York regiments.

In 1880 there was one Robert R. Swart, listed as a bridge-builder living with his wife Rachel and their son Elmer (b. 1867) in Elmira, Chemung County, New York. Curiously Rachel is reported as head of the household and her husband Robert is listed last after the son.

Robert died on July 15, 1918, in Bath, Steuben County, New York, and was presumably buried there.