PRINCETON — The curiosity of a Captain Swift descendant and help from staff at the Bureau County Historical Society led to the discovery of the namesake of the Captain Swift Bridge in rural Princeton.

While guesses about the source of the bridge’s name included suppositions about the swiftness of Big Bureau Creek’s current, Captain Swift turns out to have been a real man — and a sea captain to boot.

Born in 1784 in Dorchester, Mass., Captain Samuel T. Swift was a merchant shipmaster for 24 years for the Boston and London Shipping Co. He was said to have been the first American to make a sea voyage to the northwest coast of North America. As a captain, he circumnavigated the globe five times. He retired in 1836.

In 1838, he and his wife, Elizabeth Wilkings Swift, and their seven children moved to Princeton. One of Bureau County’s earliest settlers, Captain Swift purchased vast tracts of farmland. A highly respected Princeton resident, he was honored by having a bridge named for him near his land.

According to his 1862 Bureau County Republican obituary, “He was a man of marked individuality of character; he possessed great determination and courage, and displayed a rare and admirable coolness in the presence of danger.”

Captain Swift died in Princeton on March 15, 1862, of paralysis and was buried in Oakland Cemetery.

His obituary closed with, “… it might with truth be said of him that he was that ‘noblest work of God, an honest man.’”

Captain Swift’s ancestors were among the first settlers of Dorchester, Mass., in 1634, which was founded by Puritans escaping religious persecution.

As Captain Swift died in 1862, the Captain Swift Bridge on Princeton Township Road 245, originally built in 1915 and replaced in 2007, was likely preceded by an earlier version bearing his name.