Barton Swinnock

Greetings family and friends!  Today's page from the Ralph family Photo Album highlights my maternal grandfather Barton Swinnock who migrated from Canada and followed a life long career in metal engraving, and with his wife Annie raised a family of 5 children including our mother Connie. The first photo was taken in Berkeley in about 1916 and pictures Grandpa Swinnock with Gladys, Bart Jr., Florence and mom (Eldine was yet to be born). The second photo is of some of Grandpa Swinnock's engraving keepsakes. 

My brief memories of Grandpa Swinnock, mom’s father, are of a quiet man, usually dressed in a black and hat with a Lucky Strike in his hand and living on Durant Avenue on the San Leandro-Oakland border directly across the street from the Chevrolet plant. Christmas at grandpa and grandma’s house usually meant the ladies gathering in the living room and catching up on the past year while the guy’s played poker with the family patriarch in a smoke filled back bedroom.

After Grandpa Swinnock’s passing in 1959, and because of my interest in preserving family history and enrollment in art school, his oldest daughter “Auntie” Glady entrusted me with some of grandpa’s engraving tools, sample books and sketches of some of his elaborate designs. Barton Kennedy Swinnock, our maternal grandfather, was born in 1882 in New Brundwick, Canada to James and Sophie Swinnock. 

Wendy has traced the Swinnock branch of mom’s family back multiple generations to the United Kingdom in the late 1700’s where our ancestors were productive people working as clerks, grocery store proprietor’s and busy establishing a family legacy of skilled craftsmen. 

Grandpa Swinnock’s father James was a “whitesmith” producing household items from copper and brass (“blacksmiths” work with iron and steel). James and Sophie and their 3 children moved to the United States in 1890 taking up residence in the small rough and tumble rail stop of Reno, Nevada near the historic Comstock silver lode and just 21 years after the completion of the transcontinental railroad.

James and Sophie’s son Barton married Annie Peterson in 1904 and seeking greater career opportunities moved to Berkeley with their growing family of Gladys, Florence, and Barton Jr. Grandpa was accepted for an engraver apprenticeship at Shreve & Company, one of the renowned silver and goldsmiths in America. Constance and Eldine were born in Berkeley and Barton Sr. set out on a life long career as an engraver, first for the A.A. Handle Company and ultimately establishing Brooker & Swinnock, a jewelry engraving and watch repair partnership. Grandma Swinnock’s brother James Adolph Peterson , mom’s “Uncle Ade”, operated Peterson Iron Works, a decorative wrought iron business in Oakland and inspiration for a similar business by his nephew Barton Jr. and a Swinnock family legacy of creativity and craftsmanship.