[citation needed] After living in several states, he eventually made his way to Missouri when he moved to St. Louis and began working in real estate.

[3] The Kansas City Star responded to his opposition by calling him a greedy mossback who "evaded taxes, fighting progress, and getting rich.

[6]: 4  18,000 Kansas Citians celebrated opening day for Swope Park with the "Colonel" wandering around the crowd while they listened to a two-hour speech honoring his benefactions.

[8] The frugal millionaire commuted daily by streetcar to his downtown Kansas City office in the New England Life Building until the month before his death.

[8]: 12–17 [9] On October 3, 1909, just 18 days short of his 82nd birthday, Col. Swope died suddenly in his sister-in-law's home with Dr. Hyde in attendance, the aftermath of a perplexing, brief and violent illness.

[10] Swope's body lay in state at the Kansas City Public Library where thousands of mourners paid their respects.

At his request, Walter Stanley Haines conducted a postmortem examination of the internal organs and reported that Thomas Hunton Swope's body contained lethal amounts of both strychnine and cyanide.