Nancy Mulford Swank

Nancy Mulford Swank, a descendant of the Amagansett Mulford family, died of a heart attack on April 25 in Chapel Hill, N.C., where she had lived since 1979. She was 80.

Mrs. Swank, who retired as an administrative assistant at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, had been a piano teacher for 30 years and played for several organizations.

She was born on May 25, 1933, in the family house on Main Street, Amagansett, to Charles Mulford and the former Evelyn Miller. She grew up in the hamlet, one of the first children to attend the newly built Amagansett School, and graduated from East Hampton High School and from Virginia Intermont College in Bristol, Va.

Her future husband, Robert Swank, was the manager of the Long Island Rail Road’s Amagansett station. There was an apartment above a waiting room then, where he lived. They married in 1956, and he eventually became an auditor for the railroad. The couple lived in Smithtown until moving to North Carolina upon his retirement.

During their years on Long Island, Mrs. Swank taught piano and worked as a bank teller for a time. In Chapel Hill, both husband and wife sang in the choir of the United Presbyterian Church. According to their son, Edward Swank, her interests ran to classical music, medieval English history, and genealogy.

Mr. Swank died in 2000. In addition to her son, who lives in Chapel Hill, Mrs. Swank leaves two grandchildren. Another son and a daughter, William and Barbara, died before her. Her twin brother, George Thomas Mulford, died in 1978.

She was cremated. Her ashes will be buried in Amagansett’s East End Cemetery in the Mulford family plot, beside her husband’s and daughter’s.