Elizabeth Gilmore Swann (maiden name: Sherlock) was born on June 9, 1813, in Baltimore, Maryland, to John Sherlock and Elizabeth Gilmore. Her father, an “English gentleman,” died in December 1813. Elizabeth married Thomas Swann in Baltimore on May 19, 1834, and they had five children together: Thomas, born around 1835: Louisa Sherlock, born around 1838; Jane Byrd, born around 1840; Elizabeth Gilmore, born around 1843; and Mary Mercer, born around 1845.

Her husband Thomas was a wealthy railroad executive who became mayor of Baltimore in 1856. Elizabeth, meanwhile, devoted her time to philanthropic work. She served on the “ladies’ committee” for Baltimore’s House of Refuge and supported the city’s “Aged Women’s Home” and “Aged Men’s Home.” In the late 1860s, she became a director of the Maryland Industrial School for Girls and a vice president of the “Maryland Inebriate Asylum.” Elizabeth died in Baltimore of acute bronchitis on April 25, 1876, and was buried in the city’s Greenmount Cemetery. A local writer eulogized her as a “lady of the most exemplary Christian virtues, [who] spent her life in acts of charity to the poor and suffering.”