Alan B. Swain Pg. 412-413 - Alan B. Swain, senior member of the firm of Swain and Strahan, 833 Michigan Trust building, district managers of the New England Mutual Life Insurance Company of Boston, Massachusetts, is one of Grand Rapids most successful insurance men, having written personal business in 1924 to the amount of one million dollars of insurance. They represent the company to which was granted the first charter to do a public life insurance business, which charter was granted in 1835. Mr. Swain was born in Hesperia, Michigan, October 17, 1869, and received his preliminary education in the public schools of Hudson, Michigan. At the age of eighteen, he went to Cleveland, Ohio, where he worked at the carpenter trade for one year. He then became a bookkeeper and salesman for the wholesale millinery house of Ammon, Stevens and Company, of that city. Progressing along the ladder of business success as he acquired experience, Mr. Swain then went to Chicago as manager of two bakery lunchrooms and was in that city for years, which period included the World’s Fair and its accompanying prosperous business. Before the conclusion of the year 1894, he launched upon his successful career as an insurance man, acting as agent for various companies. Later, he engaged in the insurance business in Toledo, Ohio, one year, and then went to Kalamazoo, Michigan, where he remained until the fall of 1898. He then came to Grand Rapids as district manager for the New England Mutual Life Insurance Company, which position he held alone until 1922. At that time, he took as his partner William H. Strahan. Mr. Swain has long been active in fraternal and religious circles. He is a thirty-second degree Mason, a Knight Templar, and a Saladin Temple Shriner. He is also affiliated with the B. P. O. E., and the Masonic and Peninsular Clubs, and is junior warden of Grace Episcopal church. Mr. Swain is married and has one son and a daughter. The son, Alan D. Swain, Jr., served in the navy during the World war and was honorably discharged upon the completion of that service. The daughter, Janet Louise Swain, who was born May 17, 1916, is in school at Spring Lake, Michigan.

 

Transcriber: Mary Huizen
Created: 12 March 2003