Adeline Morrison Swain

Adeline Morrison Swain (1820-1899) was an American writer, politician and suffragist. She was inducted into the Iowa Women's Hall of Fame in 2000.

Life Swain née Morrison was born on May 25, 1820, in Bath, New Hampshire. In her childhood, she was given educational opportunities denied to many women at the time, as she was the daughter of a schoolteacher. After completing her education she took up teaching in Vermont at the age of 16. There, she taught drawing, painting, and modern languages. In 1846 she married James Swain and the couple settled in Fort Dodge, Iowa, in 1858. In Fort Dodge she organized French, English, music, botany, and art classes specifically for young women.

Swain's main interests lay in public affairs and social reforms rather than the arts and sciences, with a particular focus on women's rights. In the early 1870s the couple built a large Victorian house in Fort Dodge. The house was grander than their income allowed and they rented out rooms to boarders and also made the house available for events.

Swain was an advocate for women's right to vote and handed in a ballot for several years despite it not ever being counted. At the very beginning of the fight for women's suffrage in Iowa in 1857, only white males over 21 could vote or run for office. In 1869, Swain organized the first woman suffrage meeting in Fort Dodge and Martha H. Brinkerhoff of Missouri delivered a lecture to the community.

Swain was appointed as a correspondent of the Entomological Commission of the U.S. Department of Agriculture which led her, in 1877, to write a report documenting the devastation of crops brought on by the Colorado grasshopper. She subsequently became a member of the American Association for the Advancement of Science and became the first woman to present a paper at their national convention. Swain thus became active in politics where she was affiliated with the Greenback Party. In 1883, the Greenback Party nominated Swain for the office of Iowa Superintendent of Public Instruction. Though she lost, she was the first woman to run for statewide public office in Iowa and gained nearly 27,000 votes, and even garnered more votes than male Greenback party members who ran for other positions in public office. Adeline Swain had been the president of the suffrage club and made history as one of the first women in the nation to present a political campaign speech. She had also been an editor for the political science department in the Woman’s Tribune. By 1884, Swain was an accredited delegate of the Indianapolis National Greenback convention. She was memorialized in the "Annals of Iowa, Vol. 4, No. 1 (1899)"