After she went north with relatives, a sister died, then a brother during the
Civil War, fighting for the
Union, and a few months later the mother died. Swisher taught a little school, and saved enough money to enable her to attend a course at the
University of Iowa, which fitted her for her destined work to be a poet. In 1867,
Brick Pomeroy, recognizing her genius in a short story that she sent him, employed her on the
Daily LaCrosse Democrat. Two years later, she started
The Western Progress, a weekly newspaper at
Brownsville, Minnesota, which she owned, and edited for two years, and then sold to take a position on the editorial staff of the
St. Paul Pioneer Press. She was editor of the first literary magazine in
Minnesota,
The Busy West, also editor of the
St. Paul Chronotype. In 1874, she started the
American Sketch Book, an eighty-page historical magazine, at
La Crosse, Wisconsin, which, on account of ill health, she removed to
Texas in 1877, when she was forty years of age. During the same year, 1877, she was associate editor of the
Texas New Yorker published at
Galveston, and editor of the
Sketch Book in
Austin, Texas. In October, 1878, she married Col.
John Milton Swisher (1819–1891), of Austin, a man sympathetic in his literary tastes, and abundant in his material wealth. Two years later, she established a health spa, the "Thermo Water Cure or Hot Air Bath and Hygienic Institute", for those who suffered from
neuralgia,
paralysis, and
rheumatism. In 1882, on account of family cares and sickness, she was obliged to suspend the
Sketch Book. Among her published works were the
History of Brown County, Wisconsin, in several volumes,
Struggling up to the Lights,
Homeless Thought at Home,
Cassie, ''The Story of a Woman's Love
, and Rocks and Shoals
. Her obituary in The Austin Weekly Statesman'' (1893) mentioned that two posthumous volumes would be published, one a work on the symbology of the Bible, the other a collection of poems. Swisher and her husband were both members of the Texas Esoteric Society. She studied painting under some of the best artists in the United States, and painted landscapes and portraits that commanded admiration. She was remembered as a sort of universal genius: she cooked a dinner, made a dress, nailed up a broken fence, harnessed her horses for a drive, edited a paper, wrote a story, and then entertained with her verses in the afternoon. She was at one time a prominent lecturer. ==Personal life==