Swain, Joseph B. (December 31, 1814 - June 17, 1888)

Joseph B. Swain (December 31, 1814 - June 17, 1888) was a Nantucket tinsmith, businessman, and insurance agent based in Nantucket, Massachusetts in the middle part of the 19th century. Swain was born and lived most of his life in Nantucket, where he had an insurance business. Later in his life, recognizing Nantucket's allure for tourists, he constructed and managed a hotel, almost certainly the Hotel Nantucket, constructed on Brant Point in 1884. Most likely, promotion of his hotel was what prompted Swain to engage in his only cartographic endeavor, the production of a large sale reissue of Ferdinand Cartwright Ewer's iconic 1869 map of Nantucket. Swain was a teetotaler and a 'birthright member of the Society of Friends.' He died after a brief illness at 73.