Thomas Swann was born in Virginia on October 29, 1689. A resident of Pasquotank Precinct, North Carolina, he represented his precinct in the North Carolina Colonial Assembly throughout the 1720s, serving as the house speaker in 1724 and 1729. In 1725 he acted as an attorney for John Hawkins, an American Indian man. He died in Pasquotank in 1733.