Earl Gregg Swem
American librarian
Earl Gregg Swem (December 29, 1870 – April 14, 1965) was an American historian, bibliographer and librarian. Swem worked at the Library of Congress and Virginia State Library, and for more than two decades was primary librarian at the College of William & Mary, where the Earl Gregg Swem Library (in construction during his final years) was named in his honor.
Early and family life
Swem was born in Cedar Rapids, Iowa. His father Edward Lawrence Swem (1838–1918) (a gallery owner in Belle Plaine and later Cedar Rapids), was born in Indiana. His mother, the former Emeline Luse, was born in Ohio. Their family included at least two girls and two boys. His middle name reflects Quaker Asa Gregg (1806–1896), one of the first settlers in Muscatine County, Iowa and who wrote about the county's history. Whilst attending the local high school, young Earl began working at the Iowa Masonic Library. He then attended college in Easton, Pennsylvania, graduating from Lafayette College in 1893.
He married Lila S. Hansbrough (1878–1971), a stenographer and daughter of the house where he boarded in Washington, D.C., when he was 36 and she 31.
“Earl Gregg Swem” enters the record as american librarian. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Earl, Gregg and Swem can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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Vocabulary and entity names are the principal evidence signals here, because they determine the precision of every later search. The source revision retrieved here is dated Apr 8, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q5325884. VIAF identifies the subject as 63101152. The Library of Congress control number is n88156240. 3 of 3 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1870, 1965, 1838 and 1918.
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This entry incorporates text from “Earl Gregg Swem” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.