Frances Teresa Casper was born on December 27, 1918 in Nanty Glo, Cambria County, Pennsylvania. Her parents were Adam J. Casper, a coal miner, and Constance Kolinosky, both born in Lithuania.

In the 1920 Federal Census of Nanty Glo, Frances, age 1, had the following siblings: Charles, Petrania, Anna, and Barney.

By 1940, Frances had graduated from the school of nursing, but she is found in the census as a resident of the St. Francis Nurses' Residence because she was employed as a Registered Nurse at the hospital. She stated she had lived in Nanty Glo in 1935.

The parents of Frances died in the 1940s, her mother in 1943, and her father in 1948.

Frances served as a 2nd Lieutenant in the U. S. Army during World War II. Her application for Veteran Compensation, dated 1950, indicates that she served at Fort Gulick, a U. S. Army base in the Panama Canal Zone. She stated she was a resident of Nanty Glo at the time she entered the service on May 15, 1941. She served two periods, then separated from the service on February 21, 1945.

She married Joseph Patrick Swanick, who served in the U. S. during World War II, Korea and Vietnam, and achieved the rank of Colonel. He died September 21, 1992.

A 1957 news article in Tucson Daily Citizen, about then Major Joseph P. Swanick, stationed in Korea, states that he and his wife had four children, and she was employed as a nurse at the Tucson Medical Center.

Frances Teresa Casper Swanick died on May 5, 2006. She and her husband are buried at Fort Huachuca Cemetery, Sierra Vista, Cochise County, Arizona.