Emma (Casler) Swayze (1855-1916)

CASLER, SWAYZE

Posted By: Dorian Myhre (email)
Date: 4/5/2022 at 15:04:18

From Nevada Representative December 29, 1916 (page 1)

OBITUARY

MRS. W. F. SWAYZE

Advice comes from Los Angeles of the sudden death of Mrs. W. F. Swayze, formerly and for many years a resident of this city but for the past about fifteen years living in Los Angeles. The precise date of her death is not indicated in the information at hand but it was some time in the week before Christmas. As has been well enough understood by her acquaintances from Nevada who have been in California, she was very much a recluse and she lived very much by herself in an apartment house out there, her most confidential friends being Mr. and Mrs. Frank J. Thompson. So when her landlady heard nothing from her rooms and failing to get a response to her call she sent for Mrs. Thompson, and together they forced an entrance, finding Mrs. Swayze on the floor and bleeding from the nose. She was taken to a hospital, where she died in a few hours. She partially regained consciousness but gave no explanation, though the supposition was that she had fallen and hit her head against a range.

Mrs. Swayze came to Nevada as a bride in the early '80s and must have been approximately sixty years of age. During the twenty years of her residence here her husband was cashier of the First National bank and one of the most prominent men of this community. She enjoyed then as afterwards the privileges of ample wealth, and those who ever became sufficiently associated with her to know her found her to be a woman of much talent and attractiveness. She died not mingle with other people enough for many to know her, and so far as we can recall she did no return to Nevada in the fifteen years of her life after she left it; but nevertheless her interest in people and things here continued, we suspect more actively than they were aroused in her new surroundings, and it was only within the past few weeks that she renewed her subscription to her old home paper. In an unusually and unnecessarily quiet way she was a Nevada woman while she lived after her removal.

Upon his retirement from active management of the First National bank Mr. Swayze removed to Los Angeles and organized the Home Savings bank there, Mrs. Swayze accompanying him and continuing to reside there after his death a number of years ago. They had no children and not many relatives, although she had a widowed sister. She lived mostly by herself, and she very nearly died alone. She was a lonesome woman of ample means, and her lonesomeness invited sympathy, whether she really needed it or not. She was a good woman, and she deserved to be happy.

Further information is that Mrs. Swayze left no will and that her estate has been turned over to public administrator for settlement. The sister, who lives in Michigan, is the only known heir, and the estate is supposed to amount to $150,000. This sum, however, is subject to considerable subtraction on account of collateral inheritance tax and still more on account of methods of administration, which in California are not supposed to be organized with a view to remitting the largest possible amounts to eastern heirs, but whatever these subtractions, there will be residue and this residue of the Swayze estate will accordingly pass to the Michigan sister of Mrs. Swayze.