Bella French Swisher (, French; December 1837 – September 28, 1893) was a 19th-century American author, editor, and litterateur. She was also the founder, publisher, and owner of a newspaper (The Western Progress) and a magazine (American Sketch Book). Swisher was connected with the Daily La Crosse Democrat, The Western Progress, Pioneer Press, and the St. Paul Chronotype. Besides her journalistic writings, she published several books of non-fiction, novels, and poetry. Some of them included, 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. Swisher died in 1893. Early life and education Isabella (nickname, "Bella") French was born December 1837, at Trenton, Georgia. On her mother's side, she was related to Generals Jacob Brown and Henry Lee III, of Revolutionary era. Her grandfather, Capt. William Lee, commanded the first passenger boat that made the tour of the Great Lakes. Her father was an architect and inventor, of considerable renown, who was unfortunately stripped of quite a fortune by the great overflow of the Mississippi River in 1851; and three years later, he started for England to recover some portion of his mother's estate, but was lost at sea, or supposed to have been, as he was never heard of thereafter. Then came, for the family, weary years of battle with want. Before Bella was fourteen, she sewed from early morning till lights grew dim, at shirt making, to keep herself and family from starvation. Being obliged to leave school, she pursued her studies at night, with her books open before her while she worked. It is said "she made rhymes before she could speak plain, and played at writing stories before she could form a letter." Career 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,