Fred Swanton (1869-?) is shown with a view camera in an image taken by another unidentified photographer.

In the mid 1880s camera manufacturers began to understand the possibilities of the home or amateur photography market. Increasingly cameras, film, and the various chemical processes to produce a negative and paper print were simplified to create an attractive hobby activity.

Frederick Swanton was listed in the Bath city directories of the 1890s as an electrician. By the time of the death of his father, Henry W. Swanton, Fred had moved to Washington D. C., according to the January 1904 obituary in the Bath Independent and Enterprise, and subsequently disappeared from the historical record.

Thus ended this particular Bath branch of the Swanton family that began with Captain William Swanton, a Massachusetts native, who was believed to have started the first contract shipbuilding business in Long Reach, as Bath was known then, in the early 1760s.