Born into a farming family in the unincorporated community of Deer River in Lewis County, Swinburne lost his father at the age of twelve and had to work to support himself as well as assume responsibility for his mother and sisters.

[1] In 1861, at the start of the Civil War, he was appointed by commander of New York National Guard, Brigadier General John F. Rathbone, to serve as chief medical officer at Albany depot.

In September, as the Siege of Paris began, he was importuned by the city's American community to form, at their expense, the Parisian equivalent of the Civil War U.S. Ambulance Corps.

[1] Returning from Europe, Swinburne settled in Albany and established a medical practice, including the free Swiburne Dispensary in which tens of thousands of indigent patients were treated at his expense.

[2] Due to his unorthodox innovative methods in the treatment of bone disease, his colleagues at the College, in a secret, nighttime meeting, abolished his chair, thus when he arrived the following morning to deliver a scheduled lecture, the doors of the auditorium were locked.

The resulting litigation, which lasted for fourteen months of the two-year term, ultimately forced Nolan's resignation on June 24, 1883, and the swearing-in of John Swinburne as mayor.