The
Swedish
Texans
Larry E. Scott
IIT@ I
The University of Texas
INSTITUTE OF TEXAN CULTURES
at San Antonio
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Scott, Larry E., 1947-
The Swedish Texans / Larry E. Scott. - 1st ed.
p. cm. - (The Texians and the Texans)
Includes bibliographical references.
ISBN 0-86701 -044-4
1. Swedish Americans- Texas- History. 2. Texas-History.
I. Title. I I. Series.
F395.S23S44 1990 89- 16656
976.4'004397- dc20 CIP
The Swedish Texans
by Larry E. Scott
First edition, second printing
Copyright © 1990; 2000
The University of Texas
Institute of Texan Cultures at San Antonio
801 South Bowie Street, San Antonio, Texas 78232
Rex H. Ball, Executive Director
Production Staff: Sandra Hodsdon Carr; Jim Cosgrove;
Tom Shelton; Alice Sackett, indexer
This publication was made possible by grants from the Texas
Swedish Cultural Foundation, SVEA of Texas, Linneas of Texas, the
Gulf Coast Scandinavian Club, and the Houston Endowment, Inc.
Printed in the United Sates of America
Contents
INTRODUCTION -------------­Chapter
1
1 - Texas in the 1850's 7
2 - The Great Migration 13
3 - Smaland to Govalle 23
4 - Everyday Life in Swedish Texas 29
5 - Life on the Prairie 41
6 - The Trailblazer 53
7 - The First Immigrant 67
8 - The Nomads 83
9 - The Pioneers 91
10 - Swedish Texans, Slavery, and Civil War 101
11 - The Settlers 109
12 - Swedish Institutions in Texas 119
13 - Swedish Texans and the Galveston Flood 145
14 - Swedes in the Cities 151
15 - Swedish Place-Names in Texas 181
16 - The Swedish Language in Texas 185
17 - The Swedish-Language Press in Texas 191
18 - Swedish Writers in Texas 211
19 - Two Swedish-Texan Colleges 227
20 - Swedish-Texan Cultural Groups 241
AFTERWORD 249
NOTES 251
BIBLIOGRAPHY 269
PHOTO CREDITS 280
INDEX 283
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS 287
Introduction
Swedish immigration to Texas began in 1848 as a result of
the efforts of one man, Swen Magnus Swenson, who had
himself emigrated from Sweden to the United States in 1836.
Swenson had become a wealthy man in the ten years following
his arrival in Texas, primarily from shrewd land purchases and
revenue from his cotion plantation in Fort Bend County. In 1844
he had been joined by his uncle, Swante Palm, who helped him
in his increasingly prosperous business ventures. Palm was the
first Swede to immigrate to America with Texas as his specific goal.
Swenson was a friend of General Sam Houston, who en­couraged
the Swede to send back to his homeland for more Swed­ish
immigrants to settle the vast and sparsely inhabited interior
of Texas. Swenson did just as Houston had suggested, returning
to Sweden in 1847 to recruit families from his home parish of
Barkeryd in northern Smaland. That first year only his sister ac­companied
him back to Texas, but the following year a group
of 25 people, related to one another or to Swenson or Swante Palm
either by birth or marriage, became the first group of Swedes to
repeat the journey Palm had made a few years earlier.
Initially they joined Swenson in Fort Bend County, but
he soon sold his plantation (and its attendant slaves) and moved
to a large sheep and cattle ranch east of Austin, which he named
"Govalle" after a dialectal Swedish phrase roughly translatable
as "good grazing." Govalle became Swenson's home for over
1
Swen Magnus Swenson
a decade, during which time it was also the first home newly arriv­ing
Swedish immigrants would know in the New World. Swenson
and his uncle arranged passage for the Swedish families from
Smilland, and they, in turn, worked for Swenson in Texas to pay
off the price of the ticket. Most of the early immigrants also bought
land from Swenson-he owned some 100,000 acres in and around
the Austin area-and settled down to farm cotton.
The city of Austin thus became the home of the earliest
and largest concentrations of Swedes in Texas. North of Austin,
in Williamson County, some of the first settlers bought land from
Swenson along Brushy Creek and formed the nucleus of what
eventually became several contiguous rural colonies: Brushy
Creek, Palm Valley, Hutto, Jonah, Taylor, and Round Rock. On
the blackland prairie in northeast Travis County Swedes began
to settle after the end of the Civil War, establishing the colonies
of New Sweden, Manor, Kimbro, Manda, and Lund. All these
areas were almost exclusively devoted to cotton production, a crop
which was, of course, quite unfamiliar to Europeans but to which
they quickly adapted.
Swedes settled in Central Texas for a variety of reasons .
First, many of them had to work off their passage on the Swenson
lands in and around Austin. Second, they tended to buy land in
2
areas already settled by fellow Swedes whom they had known back
home in Smaland. Finally, many of them were given favorable
prices for land by Swenson, who wanted to attract as many of his
countrymen to Texas as possible. Even though only about 150
immigrants had made the voyage to Texas before the outbreak
of the Civil War, they were located in key agricultural areas of
Travis and Williamson counties. When immigration to Texas
resumed on a larger scale in the late 1860's, these "target" or "mag­net"
colonies which could attract Swedish immigrants in larger
numbers were already well established.
Swedes were neither the first nor the largest group of
Europeans to settle in Texas in the years following the Texas Revo­lution.
Indeed, even before 1836 Irish colonists had been granted
land in Refugio and San Patricio counties. Germans-more than
3,000 of them-had bought enormous tracts ofland in Gillespie,
Comal, and Kendall counties before 1850. A tiny contingent of
Norwegians had settled in Norse in Bosque County; several
Wendish, Czech, and Italian families had moved into Fayette
County; and there were French settlers in Medina and Dallas
counties. There were also Englishmen in northeast Texas, creating
the basis for some of the great cattle empires of the 1880's and
1890's. Thus the very modest Swedish immigration of the prewar
period should not be seen in isolation. The experience of the Swed­ish
Texans parallels that of almost every other ethnic group on
the Texas frontier. Their efforts in America were expended on
three fronts: to survive, adapt, and succeed. Survival meant the
literal struggle for shelter, food, and safety, an ordeal that proved
too daunting for more than a few. Adaptation meant the task of
learning the language, mores, habits, and skills of the new coun­try
and incorporating them as quickly as possible into their Euro­pean
frames of reference. And success-real economic achieve­ment,
as landowners and ultimately as persons of quality, the
equals of native-born Americans-was their dearest dream.
But survival, adaptation, and success were not to be per­ceived
in wholly American terms. Preservation of ethnic identity
became particularly important among the smaller groups such as
the Norwegians, Swedes, or Wends. Maintenance of community
identity was initially not as difficult in the tightly knit but far-flung
colonies on the prairies: there, the ethnic tendency to cluster with
fellow countrymen aided their sense of community identity. More
3
difficult to preserve were the customs, rituals, traditions, and folk­ways
of the European homeland and, most importantly, its lan­guage.
To keep these alive, something more than just a community
was needed-and so developed the unique institutions generated
by each ethnic group. Supreme among them were the ethnic
churches. No other institution secular or profane did more to create
a sense of self and identity in America, nor did any other insti­tution
do as much to carry the values of the immigrants down
through the generations. Finally, as the principal bearers of immi­grant
culture, the churches were also responsible for the mainten­ance
and nurture of the ethnic languages until the day came that
each group, now thoroughly assimilated or "Americanized," felt
that it was quite capable of doing without that now-embarrassing
relic of grandfather's and grandmother's European roots.
Picnic for members of the Philippi Swedish Evangelical Lutheran Church of El Campo,
late 1890's
Churches, clubs, newspapers, athletic teams, fraternal
lodges, pioneer societies, historical chapters, bands, choirs, and
literary societies-these were part and parcel of ethnic life in Texas
during the last hundred years. Swedes, like other Europeans, were
forced to adjust to a new language, a new lifestyle, new crops,
and a new climate. As their numbers increased, they founded new
colonies the length and breadth of the state, from Stockholm near
4-
Brownsville to Olivia on Matagorda Bay to Ericksdahl in North
Texas. By the 1890's the sense of a Texas Swedish community
had become statewide instead of being limited to Central Texas.
At its peak in 1918, 80 years after S.M. Swenson's arrival in
Texas, the population of the first- and second-generation Swedish
Texans-the Swedish-born parents and their American-born off­spring-
numbered more than 11,000. In absolute figures, Texas
ranked 26 among the 48 states in numbers of Swedish inhabitants.
This is their story.
5
Ericksdahl • Ft. Worth •• Dallas
• Palm Valley
• Carlson
Austin. • Decker
Hou",onO J
El C.mpo. G'lvc"on.~
• Brushy Creek
New Sweden
• • Manda Lund •
• Kimbro
__.M a nor @ Elg.i-n
6
1
Texas I• n the 1850's
"A Land Most Suitable for Europeans"
T he Republic of Texas, in which several thousand Swedes
were eventually to settle, was a largely empty frontier
territory where Indians were still a serious threat to settle­ment
and where the discontent fostered by the revolution was
still seething. The population had more than doubled between
1831 and 1836 (from 20,000 to 52,000), and it grew even more
rapidly in the decade that preceded annexation. Europeans were
arriving in ever-larger numbers, especially from Germany, and
it was to the German colonies of Central Texas in 1853 that a
Swedish writer of great distinction made his way.
He was impoverished and exhausted, and he desperately
sought employment as a journalist among the Germans of New
Braunfels. His name was Carl Jonas Love Almquist, and, until
his hasty departure from Sweden under a cloud of ignominy and
suspicion (he was accused of forgery and attempting to poison
a moneylender), he was one ofthe most brilliant Swedish novel­ists,
poets, essayists, and social theorists of his day. His early
career had been decidedly "Romantic;' but a few years before
he was forced to flee Sweden, in a novel hailed as "the first novel
of women's liberation ever written;' he pursued a revolutionary
new, realistic style.
But his abrupt flight from Sweden and subsequent wan­derings
in exile had sadly reduced him, and by the time he ar­rived
in New Braunfels he was nearly a broken man. Almquist's
7
Carl Almquist
idea in fleeing to America had been to resume his literary career
among Swedish Americans and to inform the reading public in
Sweden about the cultural attainments of countrymen in the
vanguard of the pioneers engaged in taming a new land.
Unfortunately for Almquist, he arrived too early to be
able to write for Swedes in America - the first real "national"
Swedish-American newspaper, Hemlandet, would not be founded
until 1855 - so he sought out the German Americans. Writing
pseudonymously for the Neu-Braunjelser Zeitunfj; he found in Texas
the home he sought, even if it was only a temporary one.! His
natural curiosity led him to explore the area of German settle­ment
around New Braunfels and Fredericksburg, but he wan­dered
far afield, traveling to the San Jacinto Battlefield, north
into Comanche country, and south to Galveston.
8
Almquist was a careful and keen observer. Perhaps his
own words serve best to describe the Texas that Swedes would
soon be settling in larger and larger numbers. (The quaint
English and its spelling are Almquist's own):2
The first view of the Texas coast affords
nothing of interest, no picturesque and splendid
Sceneries, no magnificent chain of Mountains,
no remarkable point, which could attract the
attention of the observer, or where he could
repose his eye with joy, or immerge in the
pleasure of delightful contemplation. The land­scape
all over is very low (scarcely 2-4 feet
above the Waterline), the shore is bare; you will
see no Wood, and very little marks of human
industry. . . . The whole country . . . is a vast
Prairie, with some small and sparse Groves of
life-oak, chestnut, pine and willow .... [A]ll
around [we saw] nothing but an immense plain
of grass and all over us the vast firmament,
adorned with millions of Stars, forming brilliant
and for the most part in Europe unknown or
unseen Constellations. The night was delightful,
the air being refreshed and cooled by pleasant
breezes. . . . The land on the other side of
Victoria grows handsomer, the region seems by
degrees to ascend, the fertile soil abound with
flowers and trees of majestic size and often
fantastical forms, being overgrown with spanish
moss, and resembling Giants, with grey arms,
dark faces , and threatening aspect. . . . in the
first summer, before the herbs wither and fade
by the hot burning Sunbeams [the land is very
agreeable] . Texas is no Tabel-Iand in the proper
sense of that word. It can geologically be
divided in three Regions. The whole country
along the Mexican Gulph seems formerly to
have been overflowed, the Ocean in earlier
times probably approaching the Rocky
Mountains or at least the Sierra Guadalupe, on
the eastern side of the Continent. In that period
all Texas was the property of Neptune,
9
who afterwards withdrew his empires, removed
his waves, and made the World a present of this
new land.
The second or middle part of Texas
commences by Austin, Bastrap and the old
Nacogdoches-road. The country in that region
is a kind of rolling land on alluvial bottom.
The lower Texas, and some Countys of the
south Boundary, and Sabine River, which
divides Texas from Louisiana and Arkansas,
you will find a great number of big Rivers, all
discharging their currents in the Gulph, viz.
Nueces, Guadalupe, Colorado, Brazos, Trinity
and Neches. Their banks are settled and
cultivated, they afford plenty of good water and
abundance of woods, Cypress, Cedar, Walnut,
Life-oak, Pine, Fig, Mulberry, Shadowtrees,
etc.; but between them you will see
nothing but immense Prairieland, almost bared
from wood and without water excepting in some
sparsed, artificial Wells. . . .
The third part of Upper Texas is
mountaneous, hilly and woody, fertile in the
Valleys and conceiling mineral, inexplored
riches in abundance. The last year (1852) massy
Gold was rumored to have been found by San
Saba, Llano, Pedernales and elsewhere in Gil­lespie
and Travis Counties; but the report was
nothing but Humbug; and the disappointed
Gold-diggers went home again, discontented,
but glad to have saved themselves from the
Indian Tomahawk and the arrows of the Comanches.
The Texas that Almquist saw, and to which more than
5,000 of his fellow Swedes would ultimately immigrate, was a
land of enormous potential, waiting for enterprising hands to
till the soil, tame the rivers, and build the cities. It is typical
of Almquist's star-crossed life that he left Texas in 1855, after
S.M. Swenson was comfortably established in Austin and where
he surely would have been received with kindness by Swante
Palm, who knew Almquist's early works well. But he left Texas
without even hearing of the small Swedish colony that had been
10
established in Travis County. Nor had he realized, on a trip
through Smaland just a year before his departure from Sweden
in 1851, that people from one of the parishes he found most
pleasant-Barkeryd Parish near Nassj6-would precede him to
Texas, the land of his early exile. An unintentional immigrant,
Almquist died in Bremen, Germany, in 1866, without ever seeing
Sweden again. 3
Another Swedish writer, a native of Smaland, provided
readers with a different view of Texas almost exactly contempo­raneous
with Almquist's. Unlike Almquist, however, J ohan Bolin
of Vi:ixj6 had never seen the land he described in En beskrifning
Ofver Nord-Amerikas FO"renta staterna (1853), nor did he want to. His
guidebook was intended for potential emigrants, but he himself
was never a victim of "America fever;' The cruel ironies of Alm­quist's
life were compounded by the fact that no one was ever
to read Almquist's eyewitness account of the geography of Texas,
while thousands read Bolin's, which was culled exclusively from
secondary sources. Yet even though Bolin had never been to
America, his descriptions of its topography, crops, climate, and
customs were fairly accurate. His section on Texas must have
sounded almost unbelievably exotic to a Swede reading of its
flora for the first time:
[In Texas one finds] melons, watermelons,
pineapples, cucumbers, sweet potatoes, yams,
potatoes, several kinds of cabbages, radishes,
asparagus, peas, lettuce, parsley, spinach,
artichokes, edible thistles, celery, purslane, wild
strawberries, cayenne peppers, tomatoes, of
which one wild variety, orchards of peach trees,
figs, pomegranates, plums, mulberry trees, apri­cots,
cherries, gooseberries, grapes, lemons,
oranges, tamarinds, wild purslane, nut and
almond trees, Spanish mulberry trees, black
raspberries, wild cherries, wild plums, dwarf
chestnuts, olive, hickory, black walnut, pecan,
persimmon, cactus, cactus figs, magnolia,
sassafras, Chinaberry, Seville oranges, wild
vanilla, myrtle, laurel, locust, elderberry, sumac,
many types of medicinal plants, many kinds of
oak, cedar, cypress, ash, sugar maples, . . .
linden, cottonwood, yew, balsam, wild stock, red
11
sage, purple thistle, begonias, clover, white
anemones, as well as a myriad of other trees,
bushes, flowers, plants, herbs, etc., both familiar
and unknown. 4
If readers found the plants of Texas unusual, how much
more unusual must its fauna have seemed when they read Johan
Bolin's account:
[There are] cattle, horses, sheep, goats, mules,
donkeys, .. . turkeys, guinea-fowl, geese, ducks,
black and gray bears, American hart, fallow,
moose, mountain sheep, antelope, bison, wild
boar, jaguars, leopards, wildcats, muskrat,
weasel, beaver, river otter, rabbit, hare, raccoon,
opossum, squirrel, jackrabbit, silver fox , prairie
dog and wolf. 5
Bolin points out that flocks of huge wild turkeys common­ly
numbered over 400 birds, in addition to flocks of ducks, swans,
and pelicans. There were sandpipers, plovers, grouse, partridges,
songbirds of all kinds "equal to the nightingale;' goldfinches, birds
of paradise, larks, hummingbirds, woodpeckers, kingfishers,
eagles, falcons and hawks, owls, and many other species of birds.
The streams and rivers teemed with turtles, alligators, chame­leons,
crayfish, oysters, mussels, redfish, trout, eel, carp, and
catfish. Bolin does not mention tarantulas and scorpions, only
wild bees, flies, and grasshoppers, but he does add, rather omi­nously,
that Texas has "an abundance of snakes in all uninhabited
areas:' The deadliest of these was considered the water moccasin,
followed by "two or three" species of rattlesnake, the corn snake,
and the cottonmouth.
All in all, Texas was not going to be much like SmaJand!
12
2
The Great Migration
Swedish Immigration to the New World
Between 1840 and 1915 nearly 1,250,000 Swedes left their
homeland to resettle in the New World, nearly a quarter
of the entire population. Only Ireland and Norway sent
a higher percentage of their sons and daughters to America than
did Sweden. 1 These Swedes were part of the greatest mass move­ment
in history; during the course of what came to be called the
"Great Migration," more than 30 million Europeans left their
ancestral homelands to start their lives over and raise families in
America, families that would know the old homeland only through
the eyes of their parents. They came, to fill a vast and empty con­tinent
and to seek their fortunes in the new American republic.
They came from every part of every country, every social
class, and every occupation. They were young and old, rich and
poor, men and women, young zealots and radical atheists, social
reactionaries and outright anarchists, industrious skinflints and
ne'er-do-wells. The tired, poor, huddled masses of whom Emma
Lazarus wrote contained not a few scoundrels, thieves, cutthroats,
and con artists, but they all added to the seething admixture that
was becoming America. And certain patterns emerge if one exam­ines
the course of the Great Migration over more than a century.
For example, the early pioneers tended to emigrate as
families: their children would be American, but the Old World
13
would be forever in the hearts of those born there. And, while
they represented every social class and profession, most of the emi­grants
belonged to the huge class of rural poor, created by the
rapid increase in population after 1800 . Young people were seldom
married before coming to the U.S.-they came seeking spouses
and usually found them. Young men initially outnumbered the
women, but by the tum of the century an equilibrium was attained
as young girls, too, rushed to reach America to find jobs as maids
in the houses of the well-to-do, while their male counterparts found
employment in the mines, forests, factories, and shops of the rap­idly
growing nation. They were all hungry, often land-hungry;
they were clever and resourceful, flexible and open-minded, ready
and eager to provide a full day's work for a day's pay.2
-~:-~.~ .. -, . {~j;~~~~" "~;;;':~
.-,~. ". ~..' "> ~. ~=" -:::>". , • \. J~ c'., ~'.-'. t}G .,. " . 'i'''-'- • •• ~~'::" ~". ~~"'!~;~~~; .. ~ ~,Al .:,~' . ',.J,. . "'"~.i".' '/:. ~ . . ,. ,_ .. .,' '~';;';;"'~"" " "" -~" ~.:.~. .. ~. ..' ..~ -
Swedes and Native Americans
14
The first groups to arrive in America came by sailing
vessels to New York or Boston, the traditional ports of immigrant
entry since colonial days. The voyage was long, dangerous, and
very expensive; few could afford even the one-way journey unless
and until they had sold virtually everything they owned in Europe.
Return journeys, of course, were out of the question, except for
the very few who made money soon after arriving in America.
With the end of the Civil War and the unprecedented
Homestead Act of 1862, land in almost limitless amounts was
made available to anyone hardworking enough to be willing to
improve it. But even President Abraham Lincoln could not have
foreseen how many millions of land-hungry Europeans would flock
to American shores in search of their dreams, then embodied in
160 acres of virgin land, free to anyone who could settle, tame,
and improve it. And after the farmers came the other folks: the
watchmakers, carpenters, cobblers, cooks, farmhands, gamblers,
ministers, editors, poets, boilermakers, hoopers, cartwrights, bar­tenders,
wranglers, and hostlers. The dreamers, drifters, and entre­preneurs
who raced to California in 1849 to search for gold (among
them not a few Swedes) were but the vanguard of a vaster horde
who took cheap passage on the fast new steamers of the 1870's,
1880's, and 1890's to seek a different (and stabler) kind of wealth
in America's teeming new cities.
Failed Experiment:
New Sweden on the Delaware, 1638-1655
Actually, Swedish immigrants had been on American soil
long before the Civil War, the Homestead Act, the California Gold
Rush, or even the American Revolution. The first concerted effort
to establish a Swedish presence in North America had been made
in 1638. In March of that year two small Swedish merchant ves­sels,
the Fogel Grip and the Kalmar Nyckel, dropped anchor in the
Delaware River near the site of what is today Wilmington. The
colonists on board-probably less than 100-quickly began to
fortify the land which they bought from the Indians and which
they named Nya Sverige, New Sweden. During the following
decade and a half, with very little help from home, forts were
15
erected along the Delaware River to protect the tiny colony from
incursions by the Indians and the neighboring Dutch and En­glish
colonists. Eventually New Sweden claimed an area slightly
larger than the present state of Delaware, but it was a very
sparsely settled area, almost impossible to defend. Only a few
resupply ships ever sailed from Sweden, and a critical shortage
of manpower remained the colony's most pressing problem.
Despite effective leadership by such colorful figures as the 300-
pound governor, Johan Printz (called "Big Belly" by the Indi­ans),
and Johan Rising, encroachment from without and dis­ease
and disenchantment from within took their toll among the
colonists. Finally, in 1654, the colony had to capitulate to the
forces of New Holland under Peter Stuyvesant, and New Swe­den
ceased to exist as an independent entity.
But a few lasting accomplishments were achieved by the
ill-fated venture. Swedish clergymen had accompanied the colo­nists
in 1638, and there was never a time that the colony was
completely without spiritual leadership, even when Sweden
seemed determined to deny it all secular sustenance. For over a
century after the colony's demise, moreover, the State Church
of Sweden continued to send Lutheran pastors to the Delaware
Valley to minister to the needs of their far-off flocks. These dis­persed
colonists in turn founded small Swedish Lutheran con­gregations
which were served by the visiting clergy. Some of
them, such as the so-called "Old Swedes' Churches," Gloria Dei
in Philadelphia and Holy Trinity in Wilmington, are still alive
and among the oldest Protestant churches in America. A few
place-names and sites have also survived from the New Sweden
period, such as Fort Christina on the Delaware and J ohan
Rising's stone house. But perhaps the most important thing that
New Sweden accomplished was to bring word of America to
Sweden for the first time. The glowing reports of Governors
Printz and Rising were full of enthusiastic descriptions of the
excellence of the American soil, the abundant game, and the
immensity of the wilderness. It is not an exaggeration to say
that the "America fever" which swept Sweden in the 19th cen­tury
had its origins in the 17th: America had been described as
the land of promise and opportunity, and that description lin­gered
and did not go away.
16
Swedish Settlement in the Early 19th Century
The factors that "pulled" emigrants toward America were
as various as those which "pushed" them from their homeland.
The golden promise of America as the land of opportunity, of
virtually limitless free land, and of a new kind of classless soci­ety,
proved to be a mighty magnet indeed, whose power in­creased
with each glowing letter home. Relief from the cycle of
drought and famine became especially important after major
crop failures in southern Sweden in the late 1860's. The Home­stead
Act (1862) was the key to the vast prairie lands of the
Midwest: a farmer intending to become a citizen could claim
160 acres and improve it by cultivation.
Although few in number, the earliest emigrants in the
vanguard of the Great Migration of the 19th century-those of
the 1830's and '40's-were extremely important. The colonies
which they founded acted as focal points for subsequent in­migration,
"pulling" the newly arrived Europeans to specific
points on the advancing frontier. In the case of Swedish immi­grants,
early colonies were successfully established in Wiscon­sin
(Pine Lake, 1841), Iowa (New Sweden, 1845), and Illinois
(Bishop Hill, 1846). (Minnesota, that most Swedish of states, had,
surprisingly, no substantial Swedish settlements until 1850.) At
that time the frontier lay roughly along the Illinois-Indiana bor­der
and moved steadily westward year by year. Thus early Swed­ish
settlement took place west of that imaginary line, and future
settlement "leapfrogged" over the more established areas where
available land had already become scarce and expensive. Fi­nally,
toward the end of the pioneering period, Swedish immi­grants
turned west and south in relatively large numbers to settle
in the Dakotas, Nebraska, Kansas-and even Texas, though none
of these states would ever be "Swedish" in the way that Illinois,
Minnesota, Wisconsin, and Iowa were later to become.
Not all Swedish provinces (landskap) sent equal numbers
of emigrants across the Atlantic-some, such as Skane or the
northern provinces of Lappland, sent hardly any emigrants, ei­ther
because the soil was rich enough to support all the people
who cultivated it or distances were too great and information
about America too sparse. From others, such as Smaland, Hal­land,
and Varmland, disproportionately large numbers set out
17
for America, leaving behind poor soil, tiny farms, and deep forests
for the promise of the New World.4
Politics and Economics in Sweden:
The "Push" Factors behind Emigration
For some potential emigrants, the increasingly rigid class
system at home pushed them over the sea to the democratic free­dom
promised and practiced in America. The turbulent era of
the Napoleonic Wars in Scandinavia ended in 1809 when Swe­den
lost a disastrous war with Imperial Russia. The result was
the loss of Finland, for more than 500 years the eastern half
of the Swedish-Finnish empire. The political repercussions of
Prince Mettemich's despotic and reactionary imperialism were
also felt in Sweden: King GustafIV Adolf was forced to abdicate
in favor of his senile and childless uncle , who reigned briefly
as Carl XIII .
A new dynasty began in 1810 with the election of Jean
Baptiste Bernadotte, one of Napoleon's former field marshals,
as crown prince and heir apparent to the Swedish throne. Shortly
thereafter, through a series of energetic diplomatic maneuvers
(including the threat of military intervention) , Bernadotte forced
Norway into an alliance with Sweden to compensate for the loss
of Finland . Irksome as the union between Sweden and Norway
was, it lasted for nearly 100 years before finally being dissolved
in 1905. Bernadotte ascended the throne of Norway-Sweden as
King Carl XIV Johan in 1818 and ruled, with increasing despot­ism,
for nearly 30 years.
A liberal trend began in the Riksdag (Parliament) toward
the end of the 1840' s in reaction to worsening economic condi­tions'
especially among the poorer rural classes . A generation
of peace, intense cultivation of the potato, and improved hygiene
had produced an unprecedented growth in the population. Cer­tain
sweeping reforms were initiated-compulsory universal
education to be provided through the State Church (the first
such law in the world) and a bill prohibiting the division of a
farmstead (hemman) more than four times (i.e . , into sixteenths)
to prevent farms from becoming too small to support a family
even at the subsistence level. But the first of these measures
languished for years until it became practical to initiate it, and
18
the second had the effect of creating a huge, landless rural prole­tariat
almost overnight, since it prohibited the younger children
of a farm-owner (hemmansagare) from inheriting any land at all.
This large class of hired hands, maids, sharecroppers, and labor­ers
provided the first and most willing volunteers for the voyage
to the promised land of America.
A lesser but still disturbingly reactionary trend was that
demonstrated by the Swedish Evangelical Lutheran Church,
since 1542 the official (and only) Church of the Kingdom of
Sweden. To maintain control over the doctrine of the faith and
to ensure compliance with Luther's Catechism and other matters
of dogma, the Church (the Second Estate of the Riksdag) prom­ulgated
the so-called Konventikelplakatet, or Conventicle Acts ,
in 1789 in the last years of the reign of King Custaf III. This
law was to prevent the gathering of any group with the intention
of receiving the sacrament of Holy Communion from the hands
of anyone not an ordained minister of the Church of Sweden.
In the early part of the 19th century, a number of dissent­ing
groups had broken away from the State Church as a wave
of pietism swept down across Scandinavia. In Norway the fol­lowers
of H.N. Hauge and converts to Quakerism had left for
America as early as 1825. In Sweden the pietistic movement
found a natural leader in ErikJ ansson, whose messianic visions
of a perfectionist, evangelical Christianity led him to burn all
books other than the Bible and to proclaim himself an incarna­tion
of deity. Jansson was arrested on numerous occasions for
violating the Conventicle Acts . Finally, in 1844, he proclaimed
that he would found a New Jerusalem in America and, like
Moses, would lead his people out of religious bondage to freedom
in the New World . This was the beginning of Jansson's and
his followers' (" Erikj ansare" in Swedish, "J anssonists" in
English) long and arduous journey across the Atlantic to their
new homes in Bishop Hill, Illinois, the communistic religious
colony on the prairie that marked the apex of emigration from
Sweden for religious reasons.
But there were other religious winds blowing in Sweden
as well . Both Baptists and Methodists had made inroads in
Sweden in the 1840's, and more and more people were defying
the Conventicle Acts to join them. At last, in 1858, the laws
prohibiting adherence to any Christian religious group other
19
than the State Church were rescinded, and ministers of other
faiths were free to preach and to convert-one of the last barriers
to full participatory democracy in Sweden had fallen.
America was still largely unknown to the Swedish com­mon
people, but the first immigrants rapidly changed that. From
Bishop Hill, Pine Lake, and New Sweden, the new colonists
began sending letters filled with details about life in the New
World to newspapers and friends in Sweden. These letters were
often first passed from hand to hand; some of the published
Amerikabrev ("America letters") were translated from French,
German, or Norwegian. Guidebooks, specially written for the
prospective emigrant, often by people who had never set foot in
-.'';-.-
-r .-::."
: -f:
,.;: _h'
N
'
Bild 69. G",ta j S a n Anto n io.
Commerce Street, San Antonio. From Nord-Amerika, published in Stockholm, 1880.
20
the New World, contained precise and occasionally even accurate
descriptions of America- its geography, climate, transportation
systems, crops, land prices, and sometimes even a glossary of
English words with their Swedish equivalents and approximate
pronunciations. One of these guidebooks was published in Chris­tiania-
now Oslo-Norway, by a Norwegian who had settled in
Henderson County, Texas. Johan Reinert Reiersen's Veiviser for
Norske Emigranter tiZ deforenede nordamerikanske Stater og Texas, 1844,
(Pathfinder for Norwegian Emigrants to the United North Ameri­can
States and Texas), was the first guidebook written by a Scan­dinavian
for Scandinavians intending to immigrate to the Republic
(soon to be State) of Texas. So popular were these guidebooks
that by 1880 most rural Swedes knew more about Chicago (then
the second-largest "Swedish" city in the world, with more Swedes
than Goteborg) than about Stockholm, their national capital. 5
These, then, were some of the reasons Swedes joined other
Europeans in the search for a new home in a vast, new land in
the West, where there was soil to be tilled and freedom from eco­nomic,
political, and spiritual tyranny. Each emigrant, of course,
had his or her own secret and personal reason for setting out on
the long and dangerous voyage: a cuff from a sadistic master,
perhaps, or escape from an unhappy love affair, or desire for fame
and fortune in a new land where money was rumored to grow
on trees, or the wish to raise children in a home that would never
again know want. All of this America offered them, and they came,
and they came, and they kept on coming.
21
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NORWAY
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GERMANY
22
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D Barkeryd
• Forserum
• Nassjo
3
SDlaland to Govalle
No area in Sweden sent more of her sons and daughters to
Texas than the parish of Barkeryd, J onkopings lan, or
County, in the northern part of the province of Smaland.
What was this homeland like that so many left behind for the
distant plains of Texas?
The area is not unlike the parts of southern Smaland
known to readers of Vilhelm Moberg's epic tetralogy, The Emi­grants.
1 Thick forests of pine and fir conceal the rocky, thin soil
on which countless generations toiled and planted. Numerous
hills and small lakes - one-seventh of the land area- break up
the forests, adding variety to the landscape but isolating the small
farms from one another. The church was the single and central
community gathering place, the heart and focal point for the
whole community.
Barkeryd is first mentioned in surviving records dating
back to 1301, indicating that the parish was even then well
established. In the 16th century its church bells were hidden from
the tax collectors of King Gustaf I Wasa (who wished to melt
them down into cannon), and they have never been relocated.
The medieval church - familiar to the early emigrants -was torn
down in 1844, and a new church (designed along the lines sug­gested
by Bishop Esaias Tegner ofVaxjo and therefore commonly
if somewhat irreverently known as a "Tegnerlada;' or "Tegner
barn") was erected on the site. Its high spire, wide, bright nave,
23
Church and cemetery, Barkeryd, Sweden, 1980's
simple interior, and large, clear, arched windows make it an
excellent house of worship but one sadly lacking in the irreplace­able
quaintness that the ancient church must have possessed. 2
The church in Barkeryd has been the center of parish life
and culture for nearly 800 years. Long before 1674, when the
church was rebuilt in stone, a wooden "stave" church had stood
on the spot. Beginning in 1350, the Black Death ravaged the
landscape like the scourge of God; in 1355, thankful for their
deliverance, the local people rebuilt the old church on greater,
grander lines. In its final form, it lasted nearly 400 years.
Under the floor still repose the bones of the finer folk of
the parish - the Ribbings of Ribbingsniis, the von Gertens of
Boarp, the various families who have owned Langasa over the
centuries, the faithful Fovelins, for a hundred years the ministers
and pastors of Barkeryd parish. Their gifts - chandeliers, cande­labra,
and crucifixes-were transferred to the new church and
tended carefully over the years. Their coats-of-arms adorn the
walls, symbolizing the class-structured society which the emi­grants
later rejected. 3
In 1844 Barkeryd parish consisted of 3218 mantal, or tax­ble
farmsteads. Of these, however, 15 (or nearly half) had already
24
been reduced by at least one-half through inheritance; one or
two were only one-eighth of a full farm. As the century wore
on and the population proliferated, the number of divided farms
also continued to increase. Below one-eighth mantal was consid­ered
to be below the level even of basic subsistence agriculture.
But the continuing population growth, accelerated, as Bishop
Tegner put it so succinctly, by "peace, potatoes, and [smallpox]
vaccination;' soon made such small divisions among the area's
younger sons inevitable. In 1850 forests covered nearly half the
remaining land, as indeed they do again today. At that time
Barkeryd parish consisted of some 1,400 people, the overwhelm­ing
number of whom lived by subsistence farming. 4 The crop
failures of the early 1860's sent many a discouraged farmer off
onto the paths of the pioneer settlers in the New World. And,
when the railroad link came, not to Barkeryd but to its smaller
neighbor to the east, Nassjo, in 1864, the parish quickly began
to decline. Nassjo is now a bustling railhead city of 18,000, while
Barkeryd is little more than a parish church, a community ceme­tery,
and a tiny museum of local culture. Its population (1,200)
is smaller now than it was in the mid-19th century.
Although the railroad was built a few fatal kilometers
distant from Barkeryd, it was not difficult for villagers to get
to jonkoping, for instance, or to the expanding metropolis of
Nassjo and from there either north to Stockholm or south to
Vaxjo, Kalmar, and the Continent. The nearest station was (and
still is) Forserum, from whence 100 pioneers set out for Texas
in 1867.5
Patterns of Migration and Settlement
Early Swedish emigration to Texas was of a special kind
known as a "chain migration." This means simply that, because
of several factors, individuals from one locale in the home country
emigrate over time to a single area in the new country. In the
case of the Swedish emigrants to Texas, the home locale was cen­tered
in Barkeryd parish in SmaJand. S.M. Swenson, the parish's
most famous son, was the first to immigrate to Texas, and, on
16 return trips made over half a century, he personally kept the
"Texas fever" alive in his home parish. A number of Swedes re­turned
to Barkeryd from Texas to visit, but even more wrote
25
Relatives oj a Swedish-Texan jamily, Barkeryd, c. 1900
home to their families about their increasing prosperity in the
Lone Star State.
The migration proceeded almost exclusively through
families: Swenson, then his three uncles Swante, Anders, and
Gustaf Palm, the four Hard brothers and their families, the five
Forsgard brothers and their families, all moved directly from
the Barkeryd area to Texas. Geographically, the number of emi­grants
decreased directly with the distance from Barkeryd.6 And
this point of origin held remarkably steady for over 40 years.
From 1848 to 1861, for example, more than 75 percent of the
immigrants to Texas came from Barkeryd and nearby Forserum
parishes. And, even as late as the period 1895-1914, Barkeryd
parish sent more Swedes to Texas than any other place in
J ankapings lan. 7
Later Swedish migrants came not from Sweden but from
the northern United States. This pattern began rather suddenly
in 1870 and ended equally suddenly about 1900. These Swedes
were lured to Texas largely by promises of abundant cheap land
26
made by land agents. By the time they migrated to Texas, most
of these northern Swedes had been in America for some time
and were more or less used to American agricultural methods.
They had learned some English, and most had even saved a bit
of money. Unlike the direct emigrants, these Swedes came from
all over Sweden, although Smaland was still the province provid­ing
the most emigrants to the New World and, on a smaller scale,
to Texas as well.
Swedish migrants from the North came principally from
Illinois and Iowa, from the regions settled earliest by Swedes.
Henry County, Illinois, and Swedes Point (Madrid), Iowa, were
two typical areas. There were relatively few Minnesota Swedes
among those who moved south into Texas. 8
Settlement patterns in Texas were related to the familial
nature of the early immigration and the personal involvement
of S.M. Swenson. Swedes in Texas settled near relatives on adjoin­ing
plots of land, to live much as they had done in Barkeryd.9
In fact, the early Swedish colonies in Texas were all located within
20 miles of one another, centering on Austin (site of Govalle,
S.M. Swenson's large ranch), north to Brushy Creek and Palm
Valley, and east to Manor. Later Swedish in-migration spread
to Round Rock, Decker, New Sweden, and Georgetown, but even
in the 1880's (when migration from the northern states accel­erated),
75 percent of the Swedes who had immigrated directly
to Texas all lived in "a relatively small contiguous area in south
central Williamson County and northeastern Travis County."l0
This "stock effect" pattern of settlement lasted until the ceasing
of immigration in the 1920's. 11
Initially, S.M. Swenson's ranch near Austin provided the
first home in America for newly arriving Swedes. For most, if
not all of them, Swenson had paid their passage and, in return,
expected up to a year of labor to repay the ticket. He was, of
course, also related to most of the early immigrants, either by
blood or by marriage, and he usually gave them generous terms
when they were ready to buy land of their own from him.
In addition to settling on Swenson's ranch (and without
wishing to get too far ahead of the story), immigrants could also
proceed north into Williamson County where Swenson's several
uncles, nephews, and brothers-in-law had established themselves
as early as 1852. The valley along Brushy Creek would become
27
almost exclusively Swedish as arriving families settled down next
to one another, much as they had lived in Sweden. They began
to clear land, raise cotton and corn, and build homes, churches,
and businesses. Barkeryd had arrived in Texas. 12
Lutheran parsonage with church in background, Palm Valley, c. 1885
28
--­.-~-
....;"..-
Everyday Life
in S-wedish Texas
Swedish Religious Diversity
4
T he pattern of emigration from Smruand to Texas paralleled
the general pattern of Swedish emigration to the United
States. But another factor that shaped the lives of Swedish
Texans diverged somewhat from the norm. This was the unusual
diversity of their religious affiliations, which, again, depended
almost exclusively on where they came from in Sweden. J 6nk6p­ings
Ian in the 19th century was one of the nation's centers of
religious dissent and remains today one of the areas with the high­est
percentage of non-Lutherans in all of Sweden. Particularly
active were the Missionsvannerna (Mission Covenant Church)
and the various Baptist and Methodist organizations.
Because confirmation in the State Church of Sweden re­quired
competence in reading and writing, albeit at a simple level,
virtually all Swedes-including potential emigrants-were literate.
It was, in fact, because of their literacy that the early reli­gious
dissidents were able to achieve their initial successes. The
great,wave of pietism that swept over Sweden in the 18th century
was, thanks to the countereffects of rationalism, largely spent by
1750. But at that time, especially in Smaland, a new interest in
individual Biblical interpretation began, which earned its adherents
the sobriquet lasare, or "readers," because of their insistence on
29
the primacy of personal scriptural analysis. 1 One of the primary
tenets of the lasare was strict temperance and a puritanical dis­avowal
of secular celebrations, such as dancing at weddings, card­playing,
and "pagan" holidays like Midsummer. The Swedish
"readers" and those affected by them, even if they remained in
the state church, became a pious, stern, hard-working people. 2
Thus it is not surprising that the habits of the homeland
became even more ingrained when transferred to America, since
such habits were not only admired by the American community
but had strong" survival value." A hard-drinking immigrant was
not only on the road to Hell but also to financial ruin, while a
churchgoer, be he Lutheran, Methodist, or Baptist, remained on
the proper path, in all senses of the word.
The high percentage of non-Lutherans (36.5 percent of the
immigrants who came directly from Jonkopings Ian to Texas) per­haps
exaggerates the basic religious orientation shared by virtually
all the immigrants.3 And the monopoly of Augustana Lutherans
among the later immigrants from the northern United States sim­ply
reflects their common experience in an area where that church
was predominant. 4
The Swedish Family
The early immigrants who came to Texas directly from
Sweden before 1880 and those who arrived after that date from
the northern states differed somewhat from both the homeland
societal makeup and from the average American social structure.
The ratio of men to women, for example, was 94.3 to 100 on
the whole in Sweden, while it was 149 to 100 among the Swedish
immigrants to Texas, about the same imbalance found in Swedish
immigrant communities elsewhere in the United States. 5 This
meant, of course, that there were few single girls among the immi­grants
and that women had the luxury of delaying marriage and
having a mate of their own choosing. Thus many of these women
married rather older than they would have in Sweden. Because
30
Anders and Anna Larson with their 12 children, Carlson Community, c. 1914
of their scarcity on the frontier, women came to have greater
independence and higher status than they had had at home.
Families tended to be large-10 or 12 children were not uncom­mon-
as they had been in Sweden, where many farmhands were
needed and infant mortality had traditionally been high. Initially,
then, because of tradition and because cotton cultivation (the
standard crop in Central Texas) was so labor-intensive, Swedish
families in Texas tended to remain large. But as Swedish farmers
retired to the towns and villages, their urban-dwelling offspring
were often fewer, and the size of Swedish-American families shrank
to match that of the American-that is, four to five children in
the 1920's.6
Traditional Swedish families were monogamous, stable,
and patriarchal, with wives and children willingly deferring to the
head of the family. The family was the center of social life; both
in Sweden and in Texas the momentous events of family life­births,
baptisms, confirmations, weddings, and funerals-were also
the most important social events. Only in magnitude and intensity
31
did wedding parties in Texas differ from similar festivities in Swe­den.
The austere life on the frontier prohibited the extravagant
four- and five-day parties common in Smruand, and religious tem­perance,
of course, forbade any form of alcohol. Coffee, the ubiqui­tous,
universal Swedish social pastime, quickly took its place,7
Divorce rates among the Texas Swedes were low, as they
were in the homeland 100 years ago. The process was painful
and shameful, although not prohibited by the clergy, and it re­mained
equally shameful when translated to America. As late as
1930 Texas Swedes divorced at a lower rate than Americans­three
to four per thousand marriages as compared to a national
average of seven to eight per thousand.8
Equally uncommon, at least until the very close of immi­gration,
were marriages between Americans and immigrants. Only
in the early days, when there simply weren't any fellow immigrants
to marry, and after 1930 or so, when it no longer made any differ­ence,
were intermarriages more common than marriage within
Wedding of Josephine Johnson and Walfred Morell, Swedish Methodist Episcopal
Church, Manda, December 28, 1906
'i,)
the ethnic group. This pattern held true throughout Swedish
America, as it did for almost every immigrant group. English­speaking
third- and fourth-generation Swedish Americans were
as prone to marry outside their group as within it. 9
Swedish Methodist Episcopal Church outing, Austin, 1890's
Attitudes
The unusually strong religious ties among Texas Swedes
meant that virtually everyone had an identity outside the home
and within a larger Swedish shelter organization. Indeed, so
strong were the ties between church and community that it was
rare to find a Swede in Texas who did not belong to a church. 10
This was in stark contrast to northern Swedish areas, such as
Moline, Illinois, where sometimes less than half of the Swedish
population had official church affiliations.
This meant, too, that the church was the center of social
as well as spiritual life . The importance of the Swedish minister
can scarcely be overemphasized. Not only was he usually the
best-educated man in the community, but it was he who presided
over virtually all the events in community life. No birthday sur­prise
party, political rally, patriotic evening, young people's
33
camp, anniversary, or ice cream social was conceivable without
a clerical blessing, prayer, or speech. Much more than weddings,
baptisms, and funerals thus came under the direct purview of
the Swedish pastor, no matter to what denomination he be­longed.
And, while Swedish Baptists may have had little to do
with Lutherans, Free Churchers , or Methodists socially (and
vice versa), the patterns of behavior and the dominant role of
the clergy was the same for each.
Patterns oflife also followed religious dictates. All groups
severely disapproved of any activities other than religious ones
taking place on Sunday. This helps explain, for example, the
dearth of Swedish baseball or basketball teams in Texas. 11
Games would necessarily have been played on Saturday, an im­portant
workday, or on Sunday, which was unthinkable.
Another moral precept shared by all the Swedish religious
groups in Texas was the almost universal abhorrence of alcohol
in any form . This was, again, a natural reaction considering
the importance of tern perance in Smaland just prior to the emi­gration.
But this was also a sentiment shared by migrating
Swedes from the northern states. Indeed, next to his general
opposition to slavery, no issue was as close to the average Scan­dinavian
immigrant's heart as was his opposition to alcohol. 12
Social Life and Holidays
Despite this somewhat puritanical fac,:ade-which also in­cluded
taboos against all forms of tobacco, card-playing, and danc­ing-
Swedish Texans were a sociable people. There being no
proscriptions against eating, Swedish gatherings were characterized
(as they still are today) by enormous amounts offood. Most often
the menu was American or Texan; barbecues were especially
popular. But the ubiquitous strong coffee-after some years, even
imported directly from Europe-and the provincial varieties of
Wienerbrod (coffee bread) and smilkakor, (cookies) stamped these
events as thoroughly Swedish.
Christmas gave Swedes a chance to indulge in religious
and secular delights at the same time. 13 Traditions of the Christ­mas
season were among the best-remembered and longest-lived
34
Afternoon coffee, El Campo, c. 1900
Old Country customs practiced by the immigrants-some are still
honored today.
Hulda Anderson related to researcher Folke Hedblom
how, as a young immigrant housewife in Brushy Creek in the
1870's, she prepared for Christmas. First, she lutade fish, that is,
soaked salted, dried fish in lye to leach out the salt. Her father
salted pork and boiled fish, including catfish. Other meats were
smoked over oak bark or hung to dry. Calves were slaughtered
to prepare for kalvsylta, a kind of Swedish head cheese. And Hul­da's
pride were her cheeses, for which she and her women friends
were completely responsible. She milked and churned and baked
ostkaka (the Smaland specialty dessert made of curdled milk, quite
unlike its American counterpart, cheesecake), week in and week
out. At the Christmas service, everyone brought cheese as ajulrffer
(Christmas offering) to the minister, who stood behind the table
on which the offerings were placed, taking note of who had contri­buted
what!14
In spite of the distance from other areas of Swedish settle­ment
Christmas in Swedish Texas meant traditional Swedish
foods. The great Christmas ham (julskinka), brown beans (bruna
biJnor), and rice pudding (risgrynsgrot) were served alongside Amer­ican
specialties such as sweet potatoes, tomatoes, and turkey. In
many homes a cedar tree replaced the Swedish fir tree (julgran),
but the evening reading of the Nativity story in Swedish by the
head of the family remained the same as in the homeland, as did
the custom of celebrating on Christmas Eve instead of the more
American tradition of Christmas Day.
35
Julotta, the Swedish early morning worship service on
Christmas Day, in which the church is lit only by candlelight,
meant as much to Swedish Americans as it did to Swedes back
home. Virtually every Swedish church in Texas once held some
kind of special Swedish service early on Christmas morning, and
many still do, often the only time during the year that the former
ethnic origin of the congregation is emphasized. In addition to
the exclusive use of lighted candles as the source of illumination,
a Swedish sermon was (and is) preached, and the best-loved Swed­ish
Christmas hymns were sung. Chief among these in popularity
were "Var halsad skana morgonstund" ("Greetings, Lovely
Morning Hour"), "Stilla natt" ("Silent Night"), "Betlehemsstjer­nan"
(" The Star of Bethlehem"). Sometimes the congregation
liked to sing the two most popular Swedish hymns, even though
they had little to do with Christmas: "0 store Gud" ("How Great
Thou Art") and "Tryggare kan ingen vara" ("Children of the
Heavenly Father"); almost any "Swedish" occasion was a good
time to sing these old favorites.
Lucia program spomored by SVEA of Texas, Houston, December 9, 1990
36
The present-day celebration of Sankta Lucia, while quite
common in Swedish America, has only recently become equally
popular in the homeland. (The tradition was once typical only
of Viirmland.) Most of the Swedish churches and clubs in Texas
have some kind of Lucia celebration, often together with julotta
or a smijrgasbord, the full-fledged Swedish hot and cold buffet.
Generally, a young girl of the congregation is chosen to wear a
crown of lighted candles and to preside over the singing of Swedish
Christmas carols, the eating of lussekatter ("Lucia cats," special
cookies), and the consumption of gallons of coffee. Originally a
Catholic remembrance of the young Sicilian saint who, in the 4th
century, chose martyrdom rather than abjure her faith, Lucia has
come to represent the coming of Christian light to a benighted
pagan Scandinavia as well as a harbinger of spring in the midst
of the profound winter darkness. Sometimes she is accompanied
by stjiirngossar, or star boys, who carry star-tipped wands symboliz­ing
the Christmas Star and wear tall, pointed "magicians' " hats
harking back to the Wise Men of the Orient, the Magi. By moving
the event from the home (where the eldest girl of the house tradi­tionally
served coffee and cakes before sunrise on December 13)
to the church, it has become a public affirmation of ethnicity with­out
denominational overtones in which all Swedish-American
families can partake.
One last note of a more secular nature concerns the ori­gins
of the Texas version of Santa Claus. According to an article
written for the next-to-the-Iast edition of Texas-Posten) Santa Claus
was imported to T exas by none other than S.M. Swenson him­self.
15 The idea is hard to credit, but the custom of honoring
jultomten) the Swedish version of Father Christmas, literally, the
"Christmas elf," seems to have entered Texas with the first Swed­ish
immigrants of 1848, who were recruited by Swenson himself.
At that time, jultomten, or nissen) was a tiny old man with a long
white beard who lived in or around every peasant family's barn.
To keep him happy (and to avoid such disasters as spoiled or spilt
milk or open barn doors and wandering livestock-all potentially
his doing), one placated the little gnome with a dish of porridge
(julgrO"t) every Christmas Eve. Nowadays he has had to shoulder
greater responsibility, such as distributing presents to children,
and has consequently greatly increased in size, so that he does
resemble Santa Claus or Father Christmas.
37
The climate of Texas mitigated against the fervent celebra­tion
of Midsummer which, in Sweden, was as festively celebrated
as Christmas, if not more so. But the Dionysian aspects of Mid­summer
intoxication (literal and figurative), as well as its possible
pagan origins, made Midsummer a much less popular holiday
in Texas. Although it was celebrated in the Austin settlement,
complete with maypole and dancing (a 1900 newspaper account
reports that the Swedes partied until 2 a.m. !), 16 it has, for the
last 75 years, been equated with the commemoration of the arrival
of S.M. Swenson in 1838 and the first group of immigrants a
decade later. Texas banbrytareforeningen (Texas Swedish Pioneers
Association) has celebrated this historic moment since 1912 17 (see
Chapter 20).
Swedish-Texan Architecture
The supposition that Swedes were the exclusive importers
of the log cabin to America has generally been discredited. Yet
small one-room timbered houses were extremely common on pio­neer
farms and ranches in Swedish settlements from Minnesota
to Texas. 1S
In the unusual climate of Texas there was no need to build
stout buildings with massive walls to support steeply pitched roofs
strong enough to withstand heavy snowfalls. Instead, the problem
was usually the heat, with its attendant dust and discomfort.
Swedes quickly adopted local techniques and patterns for their
architecture, styles well suited to the environment of Texas.
Many of these styles were, of course, to be seen in Sweden
as well, but there they were the franchise of the upper classes,
even of the aristocracy. For example, no Swedish farmer (at least
in the 1860's) would have dreamt of building the grandiose frame
houses with large windows, verandas, and ornamental woodwork
in which his Texas counterpart felt most at home.
So far did this "Americanization" of architecture go that
researcher Carl Rosenquist stated flatly 19 "there was no attempt
made by the Swedes of Texas to set up any of the old-country
38
Mrs. Carl Gustaf Palm behind log cabin, originally located at Govalle, in which her
husband's family lived during the 1850's, Austin, c. 1934. (See p. 248.)
physical arrangements when they organized their communities."
The American grid pattern of rectangular 640-acre, square-mile
sections did not encourage development of "cluster" communities
like the Old World villages which centered on the parish church
or a central square. According to Rosenquist, "in no case known
to the writer do the ... buildings built by Swedes in Texas show
any trace of Swedish influence whatever." 20
Yet there may have been just a hint of Old World design
in some of the later frame farmhouses, the modest '( American' ,
homes that replaced the cruder and intentionally temporary log
structures. One such design was the typical "dog-trot" house,
quite common throughout eastern and central Texas and parts
of the southern United States, from which area it had been im­ported.
Typically such a structure consisted of two "pens" or
rooms under a common gabled roof, with an open breezeway
between the rooms. Usually a long porch was built along the south
side of the building. This type of structure was easily created out
of an existing log structure and had the added advantage of
providing the maximum ventilation during Texas summers. A
number of such houses were built by Swedish farmers in the New
Sweden community.21
39
Another variation on this architectural theme was the
so-called "double-pen" house, which consisted of two symmetrical
ground-floor rooms under a common roof. Similar structures­called
megaronhus or parstuga-are uncommon in Sweden but not
altogether unknown. The Andrew Palm House, built in Palm
Valley in 1873 and moved to downtown Round Rock in 1976,
is a good example of a framed and sided version of a double-pen
house built by Swedish Texans. Annie Branham mentions living
in such a house near Coupland just before World War I. 22
Andrew Palm Jamily in front oj their residence, Palm Vt:zlley, 1900's
In summary, life for the Swedish set tlers in Texas was
hard but not significantly different from that of other pioneers.
Confronted primarily with the necessity of adapting to new con­ditions
of agriculture and climate, the Swedes of Texas also faced
the obstacles that all other non-English-speaking immigrants faced:
the language barrier and the preservation of their own Old World
values in the multicultural arena of the frontier. They were aided
in these twin tasks of adaptation and preservation by the institu­tions
they brought with them and the new ones they created when
they got here; these will be examined in detail in the last third
of this book. But before the chronicle of Swedish settlement in
Texas is presented, the vivid firsthand account of the Bergman
brothers of Lund will fill out the story of life on the prairies of
the Lone Star State.
40
5
Life on the Prairie
The Letters of Carl and Fred Bergman
Narrative accounts of actual experiences by Swedish immi­grants
to Texas are extremely few. Swante Palm's incom­plete
autobiography ceases with his arrival in Fort Bend
County. Fredrik Roos af Hjelmsater's diary similarly stops with
his departure for Texas from New Orleans in 1852. Vilhelm Mo­berg
based much of his account of pioneer life in Minnesota
in his Emigrants tetralogy on the journals kept by Andrew Peter­son,
who left careful and vivid descriptions of immigrant life
in Chisago County over the course of half a century. While Texas
produced no Andrew Peterson, it did serve as home to two broth­ers
from Ostergotland, Carl J ohan and Claes Fredrik Bergman,
whose letters home to their sisters in Sweden give almost as
colorful an insight into rural life in the Swedish settlements of
Texas as Peterson's do for Minnesota.
Carl J ohan Bergman was born in 1858 at Ijemfriden, a
tenant farm dependent on the larger farm Lilla Anestad a bit
south of Linkoping, Ostergotland. His younger brother, Claes
Fredrik ("Fred" in America), was born three years later. Their
three elder sisters, Maria Christina (1847-1870), Mathilda Sofia
(1850-1923), and Hanna (1855-1915), remained in Sweden after
Carl and Fredrik emigrated, but reciprocal letters crossed the
Atlantic at regular intervals for nearly 50 years. In Sweden Carl
had experienced the bitterness of bankruptcy in the firm which
employed him and so decided to emigrate in 1879, taking his
younger brother with him.!
41
Carl Bergman
They arrived in New York September 8, 1879, on the City
of Montreal, two of some 500 immigrant passengers about to start
a new life in the New World. They made their way first to Bridge­port,
Connecticut, where the large Swedish population made
it relatively easy to find factory jobs. But they dreamed of owning
their own land and fell in with some like-minded Swedes who
were discussing the possibility of moving to Texas, where land
was said to be abundant and cheap. One of them was J ohan
Westling, who already had a brother and a son in Texas. Westling
journeyed alone to Austin and rented land in New Sweden, east
of Austin in Travis County. He kept in touch with his friends
in Connecticut and urged them to follow him to Texas. In 1883
the Bergman brothers and their friends August Thornquist and
Gustaf 0. Seaholm had saved enough money to make their move,
and they joined Westling in New Sweden.
They purchased unbroken, thinly forested prairie land
just to the north of New Sweden in a tiny Swedish community
named Lund after the southern Swedish university city. It was
to be their home for the rest of their lives. 2
The letters of Carl and Fred Bergman to their surviving
sisters, Sofie and Hanna (the eldest of the siblings, Maria Chris-
42
Fred Bergman
tina, had died in 1870), cover the years from 1879 to 1923. The
brothers described in formidable detail the arduous life on the
Texas prairie and demonstrated the same kind of versatility, in­genuity,
and steadfastness that characterizes Moberg's fictional
hero, Karl Oskar Nilsson, in a similar situation in Minnesota.
But life in Texas was quite different from life in Chisago County.
The terrible heat of Central Texas, more than anything
else, caused the immigrants immeasurable discomfort. Their
Swedish clothing was designed for much cooler temperatures,
and the Bergmans suffered greatly until they were refitted in
garments more suitable for the heat. The shifting Texas weather
fascinated the brothers: 3
I wish that I could describe Texas for you but it
would be too difficult, for much is still strange
to me myself. When it begins to rain, it can last
for long periods of time and the same is true
for periods of no precipitation, which also last
for long periods. Swedes who have been here for
a longer time say there was a period when it
did not rain for 18 months; there was a terrible
drought and lack of water. Of course, this was
43
naturally something unusual, perhaps it has
never happened before or may never happen
again. The soil here is of such a consistency,
that when it rains, we can neither ride nor
walk, it becomes so muddy, so then we have to
stay inside long hours. Or, if we do go out, we
have to ride horses. Winter is variable,
sometimes warm, sometimes cold. We have no
winter before Christmas.- Now, I have not been
to a town in seven months, and perhaps four or
five months will go by before I get there again.
I don't miss it, we have 18 English miles there,
that is about 3 Swedish miles. Fred and I have
slept outside on the porch for over a week it is
so warm in our room that we can't sleep there.
July, August, and even September are usually
so hot that one can't go out at midday, but
afterwards it gets a bit cooler. I don't think
you'd recognize us, we have become brown
and lean ....
In January of 1885 they moved into their own home. 4
We have moved from the Swedish family [the
Johan Westlings] whom we have talked about
before, but we live just ten minutes away from
them so that we are in constant communication
with them. Our farm is rather large, 65 tunnland
[about 325,000 square meters, or 67 acres], we
have two yoke of oxen and a pair of horses. We
have a Swede who works for us [August
Thornquist from Bridgeport], he is married and
his wife is our housekeeper. We celebrated
Christmas in good health, although not so
festively since weather was cold and rainy. New
Year was the same. The first Sunday after New
Year, we were invited to dinner at the home of
the man we rent our land from, he is an old
colonel [Col. Rayne, who owned a great deal of
land in the area around New Sweden and
Manor]. There we had a rather good time,
44
he has two sons and a daughter at home, and
several other children besides. Now I must close
with many warm greetings and wishes for
continued good fortune in the New Year.
Your brothers,
Carl and Fred
By April 1885 the brothers had acquired "a pair of don­keys,
. . . three cows, two calves, fifteen hens, 17 chicks, and
two dogs-a good beginning, all this!" In addition to their cotton
and corn production, they were now raising some oats for feed
and some typically Swedish food as well: onions, potatoes, and
yellow peas. Rain, however, destroyed their cabbage and ruta­bagas,
and the long drought the previous year reduced the cotton
crop considerably. 5
In subsequent letters Carl described the process of culti­vating,
picking, and cleaning cotton, which was, to the sisters
in Sweden, still an exotic, tropical crop. The brothers proceeded
to plant apricot, fig, and plum trees but found that apples and
pears did not do well under the fierce Texas sun.
By midsummer 1886 they had dug a well, "which pro­duced
abundant good, cold water;' and procured a third cow,
which produced enough extra milk to feed their new pigs. Hail
"the size of small hens' eggs" damaged the cotton crop but not
severely. In other places, hailstones that weighed as much as
"seven skalpund' [7 pounds] had totally destroyed all the crops.
The wind was so strong that Fred could not open the doors;
the hail was so fierce that cattle died in the fields and houses
had their roofs destroyed. 6 Despite all this, the Bergman broth­ers
anticipated an excellent harvest, an event which they were
rarely to experience in subsequent years.
The daily problems oflife on the prairie appear and reap­pear
in the correspondence between Carl and Fred and their
sisters. Storms, drought, worms and pests, intense heat and vio­lent
winds, swarms of grasshoppers that darkened the sun -all
these and more they described and took in stride. But the prob­lem
that vexed the bachelor brothers most was where and how
45
could they locate suitable wives? While they searched, they did
the "women's work" themselves: 7
Baking and washing are the hardest things we
have to do for they occur so frequently, baking
every other day and washing once a week.
Naturally, we don't wash our sheets or things
that need to be starched, but only our work
clothes. For Xmas, we slaughtered two fine pigs
and can you believe that we slaughtered them
ourselves, without help? We're not afraid to do
whatever needs doing. It doesn't go as quickly
here to milk two cows, since here they have the
stupid idea that the calf must suck down the
milk first, otherwise the cows will not allow the
milk to flow. And if the calf should by accident
die, the cows dry up altogether. Can you guess
how many laying hens we have now? . . . I
believe it is about 80 now. We have several
dozen eggs a day. We cultivate some potatoes,
but we cannot keep them long because of the
heat. Sweet potatoes, on the other hand, are
plentiful. We certainly eat them but we prefer
the usual kind. Vegetables can be grown but not
with much success since the summers are so dry.
Late in 1887 the Bergmans bought another piece ofland
near Johan Westling in the northeast corner of Travis County.
They were now senior members of the New Sweden Lutheran
congregation, about a six-mile ride from their farm. Gradually
their harvests increased; by the fall of 1888 they had to hire five
Black laborers to help with the cotton-picking.
Both brothers were gifted musically. They sang in the
church and secular choirs and were often sought out to play their
violins for dances - song and music were among the few real
enjoyments which they had or could afford. They were also still
actively seeking wives but so far without success.8
The Bergmans received their mail at the post office in
New Sweden, which had been established only three years before
they settled there; that also became their official address in 1889.
Carl Bergman was instrumental in the formation of a local
telephone company to serve the Swedish communities in eastern
46
...,
Swedish Evangelical Lutheran
congregation, New Sweden,
1880's
Travis County. The brothers purchased 230 acres of land that
year at the rather high price of $12.50 an acre, but under the
mesquite and prickly pear it was good land, waiting to be planted
in cotton. Carl cooked the food and cleaned the house, but soon
a Swedish family came to take over those chores.
The brothers also wisely decided to sell off some of their
excess land, retaining 65 acres for cultivating crops and 50 for
grazing cattle. "Sixty-five [acres] are all that two men can take
care of, but even so they must hire on too many extra workers
and you have to work the land just like a garden plot." Eight
years after coming to Texas they owned six cows, three yearlings,
and five calves, plus pigs, chickens, and laying hens. 9
It doesn't pay to sell butter when you can't get
more than 8, 10, or twelve cents a pound. We
can't sell our milk either because there's no
buyer, except in the cities, but we live too far
away. There, milk costs 35 to 40 cents per can.
One can buy eggs for 6 cents a dozen, so
everything is cheap. But this is what it costs
during the time when there is an abundance of
47
these products: in the winter time, on the other
hand, prices are driven up: butter 40 cents a
pound, eggs 25 to 30 cents a dozen, milk all
the way up to 60 cents a can, but I must add
that these are the highest prices I have heard
paid for these products. . . . We get four
pounds of coffee to one dollar, not the best but
rather good, sugar, 10 pounds [for one dollar].
Wheat flour comes rather more expensive
namely $1.50 per [lis]pund or 20 skalpund [about
20 American pounds]. Potatoes, again, are
among the most expensive items, from $3, yes,
up to $5 per Swedish bushel. Clothes are also
very cheap, but now I'll leave the subject for
another time.
By 1892 the Bergmans' crops were more regular and so
was their income. The biggest changes had come in the garden
that both brothers worked with pride. 10
We have four plum trees, around 40 peach trees
and six mulberry, we will increase them as we
can in time with other varieties. Vegetables are
nearly the same as with you - potatoes, beans,
peas, cabbage, red beets, watermelons,
muskmelons, many kinds of squash, as well as
some varieties foreign to your climate.
In 1894 it seemed as though at least Fred Bergman's
dreams of wedded bliss were about to be realized. He became
engaged to Miss Amanda Olson, who was the daughter of
Johannes Olson, a pillar of the Swedish-American community
in Texas. But the good news was not to last, however, for the
engagement was soon broken off by mutual consent. Miss Olson
and the Bergmans remained friends for years, however, and often
visited one another socially. 11
The Bergman brothers believed fervently in the idea of
the self-made man. And, next to owning land, the best way to
become a success in America was to own and operate an indepen­dent
business. After nearly two decades in America, and despite
the rather meager return from their land, they had amassed
enough capital by 1897 to underwrite their most daring entre­preneurial
venture - taking over management of the post office
48
and the general store in Lund. 12 Within two years their $5,400
investment was bringing in nearly $11,200 a year. They sold gro­ceries,
hardware, men's clothing, shoes, hats, and all kinds of
dry goods. Soon they were one-third owners of the local telephone
company (the other owners being Seaholm and August Thorn­quist,
with whom they had resided earlier in the 1880's). 13 Busi­ness
kept improving, and by 1902 they even talked of returning
to Sweden to see their sisters one last time. But unhappily on
February 13, 1903, Carl Johan Bergman died suddenly of typhus
and exhaustion. 14
His brother's death at the age of 44 was a shattering blow
to Fred Bergman. They had rented out their land in 1898 to
get started in business. They had also invested in the Lund cotton
gin and worked to attract more business to the area, which now
supported a blacksmith and a second general store. After Carl's
death there seemed little purpose in any of it. Fred wrote: "Oh,
my sisters, how empty and desolate it is .... Oh, how lonesome
I am. I want to go home to my fatherland once more."
He wanted to sell the business; Carl's will left him with
$10,000, and he wished to liquidate the property as soon as
humanly possible, but the tide of events kept delaying his deci­sion,
for in February 1904, at the age of 43, Fred Bergman finally
got married!
The bride's maiden name was Olga Nygren, and she and
her family were all from New Sweden. Olga's father, C.M. Ny­gren,
was one of the "sixty-seveners" who left Forserum, Sweden,
under Daniel Hurd's leadership two years after the end of the
Civil War. Nygren married Sofia Sandahl of Jarsnas, near Bar­keryd,
Smaland, in Austin in 1870. Eight years later the family
moved to New Sweden, where Nygren bought a small farm. He
was an active member of the New Sweden Swedish Lutheran
Church, where for many years he served as a deacon. He was
even able to send his daughter Olga to Bethany College in
Lindsborg, Kansas, for a time. 15
The newlyweds were delighted with one another and with
married life; it was something both had looked forward to, and
neither was disappointed with marriage or each other. In 1905
the Bergmans' only child, daughter Ruth Hildegard, was born,
so Fred Bergman's life was far from over. His interests in "Sandahl
and Bergman" were now, in 1905, only nominal, but his business
49
Bergman farm house, Lund, c. 1905
sense was too strong to allow him to retire to his farm in Lund
full time. Within a year he was one of several Swedish immigrants
who founded the Merchants and Farmers State Bank in Elgin,
the first (and only) incorporated wholly Swedish bank in Texas.
For more than 30 years it was to serve the needs of the eastern
Travis and Bastrop County Swedes. It weathered a number of
local and national recessions, only to be forced into liquidation
by the Great Depression. Even so, the Merchants and Farmers
Bank managed to hang on until 1936, when it was finally forced
to close its doors for good. 16 "Sandahl and Bergman" opened its
new headquarters in Elgin in the fall of 1906. The all-brick
building had cost $6,000 to build and contained an inventory
worth more than $22,000. Almost from the beginning, it was
recognized as the best store in Elgin. Bergman remained a full
partner until 1913, when he sold his interests to a fellow country­man,
Carl Carlson, vice-president of the Elgin National Bank. 17
He seems to have sold all but the Lund property at about
the same time in order to facilitate a move to Austin. There he
acted as an auctioneer and served on the Skandia Mutual Fire
Insurance Board. He spent his last 30 years in Austin. 18
50
Fred and Olga Nygren Bergman
and daughter Ruth
He, like S.M. Swenson a half century earlier, never lost his
faith in the promise of the New World nor did he ever regret
his emigration. He wrote to his sisters accordingly in 1908: 19
It is fun to be able to send something to you. If
I had stayed home, I probably wouldn't have
been able to do anything for you, but Texas is a
place for the poor to work their way up by
means of work and thrift. Poor Swedes come
here practically all the time, and in a few years
they are independent. This place is not for a
lazy bones but for the diligent.
But he was not wholly uncritical of Texas. The women, he
felt, were too small! "Here in Texas, women are in general small
and thin, the climate is the reason:' His plans for returning to
Sweden seemed terminated: "I would freeze to death in an instant
if I were at home ... [and] if a Scandinavian were to come
here to Texas in the summer, I don't think he would make it:,2o
51
In 1910 Bergman bought one of the first cars in the area­an
Overland that could seat eight -an event noteworthy enough
to make the pages of Texas-Posten. Fred found his machine prefer­able
to mules and horses in the almost impassable mud created
during Texas winters. On two occasions, he noted proudly to
his sisters, the car made it possible for the family to attend julotta
services in New Sweden-without the Overland, they would have
had to stay at home. 21
In 1925 Fred Bergman sold his farm in Lund, thus cut­ting
his last tie with the land he and his brother had so labor­iously
cleared and cultivated for nearly 40 years. His letters to
Sweden ceased in 1923 (with a major lacuna between 1913 and
about 1922), but he lived on in Austin for 23 years. Finally on
July 7, 1946, a fall at home sent him to the hospital with a broken
hip. There he suffered a heart attack and died onJuly 11 at more
than 85 years of age. 22
The record of the Bergman brothers is unique in that the
original sources - their ''America letters" - have survived, but
their story was typical, even archetypical, of the aspirations of
the Swedish immigrants who settled in Central Texas.
Sandahl and Bergman Store with crowd listening to Buster Brown salesman, Elgin,
c. 1910
52
6
The Trailblazer
Swen Magnus Swenson
Thousands of Swedes who turned their backs on their home­land
to strike out for the Promised Land on the other side
of the Atlantic did so in response to the urgings of a handful
of extremely persuasive individuals. Per Cassel led his small band
from Vastergotland to the prairies around New Sweden, Iowa.
GustafUnonius's less successful Utopia, " New Uppsala" at Pine
Lake, Wisconsin, nevertheless inspired several subsequent groups.
And Erik Jansson's religious fervor convinced more than 1,200
of his followers from Uppland and Halsingland to join him in
the arduous trek across the Midwest to the fertile fields of Henry
County, Illinois, where he established his "New Jerusalem," the
colony of Bishop Hill.
But all these ventures-the earliest in 1844, the latest in
1846-had been anticipated by a young Swedish merchant from
northern Smaland named Swen Magnus Swenson, whose plan
it became to build a Swedish colony in the Republic (ultimately
State) of Texas. He was among the first of a new kind of entre­preneur-
the "emigrant agent" -whose charm and persuasion
convinced hundreds of his countrymen to risk the hardships of
emigration for a better life in the New World.
Many details of Swenson's life have been lost or confused,
and some have entered the realm of legend. One story, for exam­ple,
alleges that Swenson spent three years as an English merchant
seaman before coming to America, even though his emigration
53
Swen Mangus Swenson
from Sweden and his arrival in New York are known to have
occurred in the same year (1836). Many such tales can be traced
to August Anderson's fictional biography Hyphenated: The Life oj
S.M. Swenson, which blithely perpetuates the legendary aspects
of Swenson's life. But Swenson's life did generate colorful stories,
and his extraordinary accomplishments are the kind that lend
themselves almost naturally to embellishment.
Swen Magnus Swenson! was born February 24, 1816, the
second son of Sven Israelsson and Margareta Andersdotter in the
parish of Barkeryd, Sweden, which lies midway between the cities
of Nassjo and Jonkoping in northern Smaland.2 Swen Israelsson
was a member of the jury of the local assizes and also a rusthJillare,
or local cavalryman. In return for providing part of the parish's
military contingent, the family was given a small farm named
Lattarp about five miles west of the village church on the banks
of Lattarpssjon (Lake Lattarp). But life was hard, especially for
a farmer trying to till the rocky soil of Smaland, some of the stoni­est
ground in all of Sweden. A small annual allowance barely paid
for Israelsson's uniforms and the upkeep of his military equipment
and horse. By 1829 there were five children in the family, and
54
feeding them all adequately was something the parents were
finding increasingly hard to do.
So, at the age of about 13, Swen Magnus was sent as a fos­ter
child to his paternal relatives at A.lmeshult, a small ironworks
in nearby Solberga parish. In 1831 he found employment as a
clerk in the shop of J.M. Bergman in Eksj6, some 40 miles from
the home farm. A year later he left for the port of Karlskrona,
where he worked for four years. There he was employed by N.H.
Hedin, an iron merchant. Swenson was industrious and clever
and especially adept at keeping accounts, so that by 1836 he could
describe himself as a bokhallare (bookkeeper).
According to one account, a "box on the ear" caused
Swenson to hurl his cap to the ground and swear that he was
headed for America where there were "no more masters!" But
there is no evidence that Swenson was ever bitterly disenchanted
with his homeland. On the contrary, he was almost classically
afflicted with the immigrant's "divided heart." As late as 1840,
for example, he wrote home to a friend that he still considered
America to be his temporary home.3 He returned to Sweden 16
times and always expressed the deepest love for his homeland.
But an odd and seemingly unrelated footnote to Swedish-American
history may provide some evidence at least for Swenson's initial
departure and destination.
While in Karlskrona, he had become acquainted with the
commandant of the naval base, Admiral C.R. Nordenski6ld, who
had earlier served as captain of the Swedish frigate af Chapman.
This ship and the Swedish man-o-war Tapperheten had been pawns
in a complicated game of international intrigue which eventually
encompassed both Swenson and his uncle Swante Palm.
In September of 1826 Nordenski6ld was ordered to sail to
Cartagena, capital of the new republic of Colombia. There, his
ship and Tapperheten were to be sold to Colombia in a complex
deal engineered by Sweden's King Carl XIV Johan and worked
out by Swedish-Norwegian consul-general in New York Severin
Lorich. The idea was that, in exchange for Colombia's purchase
of the ships, Sweden would officially recognize Simon Bolfvar's
revolutionary government and would, in return, receive favorable
trade arrangements for Swedish iron through the Swedish West
Indian colony at Saint-Barthelemy. Unfortunately for King Carl
55
Johan and his henchman Lorich (who had worked out the naval
sale and the secret trade agreement over several years in Colom­bia),
the Russian czar, Alexander I, learned of Sweden's intention
to recognize a revolutionary government. This was a violation
of the Holy Alliance, and Sweden was effectively ordered to cease
immediately as were the governments of the Netherlands and
France, on whose backing the Swedish king depended. So, having
sailed for three months, Captain Nordenski6ld reached Colombia
only to find his orders countermanded: the Colombian government
had no intention of buying the Swedish ships without getting badly
needed international recognition from Sweden. In frustration Cap­tain
N ordenski6ld and a depleted crew (some had gone ashore
in Cartagena and had not returned) turned north to New York.
There his little fleet was put on the auction block and sold for
a fraction of its actual worth. More seriously, the funds raised
from the ignominious sale were insufficient to pay the return
passage of the remaining 700 crew members. Put ashore in New
York, they became involuntary immigrants since they had no way
of paying their own passage home to Sweden.4
Now, ten years after the fiasco, Admiral Nordenski6ld ex­pressed
his concern about the fate of his former crew to young
S.M. Swenson, who was about to depart for New York. Swenson
carried a letter of introduction from Admiral Nordenski6ld to the
Swedish-Norwegian consul in New York, the same Severin Lorich
who had put together the disastrous Colombian deal for King Carl
J ohan a decade earlier. Lorich was to become a close friend and
business associate of Swenson's in later years,S but as late as
1845, still plagued by the repercussions of events now 20 years
in the past, Lorich enlisted the help of Swenson's uncle, Swante
Palm, in the protracted search for the stranded Swedish sailors.6
While this is hardly a substantive explanation for Swenson's emi­gration-
his decision seems to have been reached before Norden­ski6ld
contacted him-it at least provided him with an excuse to
sail to New York and also furnished him with an influential contact
in the New World.
So, his mother and sister waving farewell, S.M. Swenson
left Sweden on board the brig Rhine on February 13, 1836, just
a week before his 20th birthday'? The ship docked in New York
on June 20 after more than four months at sea. Swenson's ship
did not sink or explode immediately after his arrival in New York,
56
as one story had it, although there was a fire on board the Rhine
that destroyed the cargo, some of which was Eskilstuna iron con­signed
to Swenson for sale by his Swedish employer, Mr. Hedin.
But all these elements have worked themselves into the romantic
fabric that was to be Swenson's life .
Using his introduction to Consul Lorich, Swenson was
soon working as a clerk for $15 a month. After studying English
intensively for two months, he found a better job with the Balti­more
and Ohio Railroad in Maryland. In 1838, after two years
in America, Swenson was sent by his railroad to Texas to investi­gate
possibilities for expansion into the vast area claimed by the
newly independent republic.
It was a fateful assignment, but not so dramatic as some
stories have it. The ship that brought Swenson to Galveston did
not sink in Galveston Bay, nor did Swenson swim ashore, like
Robinson Crusoe, the sole survivor, and get his start as an itin­erant
peddler by salvaging the cargo from the wreck. But he seems
never to have given Baltimore or the B&O Railroad a second
thought. Soon he had formed a partnership with well-to-do mer­chant
John Adriance in Columbia, Brazoria County. The alliance
was an excellent one, with Swenson on the road as a traveling
merchant and Adriance minding the store in Columbia. Swenson
prospered and, within four years, concluded a second business
arrangement, this time with George W. Long, a wealthy physician.
Dr. Long was one of the first doctors to serve in Fort Bend
County. He had come to Texas from Tennessee because of his
wife's and his own fragile health in October 1837: both Longs
were consumptive.
Like many wealthy Southerners, Long had come to Texas
to increase his fortune by becoming a gentleman farmer. He
planted his fields in the crop that he knew best and that was begin­ning
to pour wealth into the impoverished Texas republic-cotton.
Long's plantation, Finckley, was outside Richmond in Ft. Bend
County. He owned some 400 acres of bottomland across from
the Big Bend of the Brazos River. Long ran the entire operation
with the labor of slaves. Swenson came to know Long when he
stopped periodically at Finckley during his travels for Adriance
around Texas. Long was so impressed with Swenson's diligence
and ability that he wanted to make him overseer of his cotton
57
plantation as well as his business partner, but Swenson was too
busy on the road to settle down just then.
In December 1842 Swenson was transporting merchan­dise
from Houston to Richmond by ship when one of the vessels
ran aground and broke up, resulting in heavy losses . Swenson
tried personally to salvage what little was left of his goods and
so may have inspired both the legend of his losses in New York
and the shipwreck in Galveston upon his arrival in Texas. He
turned over his peripatetic traveler's rig toJohn Adriance, accepted
Dr. Long's offer, and settled down to run Finckley.
The tuberculosis which had driven Dr. Long to seek ref­uge
in Texas finally claimed him near Christmas 1842. His young
widow, Jeanette, spent four years after her husband's death with
family in Tennessee, while Swenson moved into Finckley to man­age
the estate in accordance with Dr. Long's last wishes. But,
through a frequent exchange of letters, Swenson and Jeanette
declared their mutual attraction. Jeanette remained in Tennessee,
where, in the fall of 1843, she and Swenson were wed. Although
their marriage was to prove short-lived, it was a genuinely happy
one, with busy years filled with bustling activity and growth.
The Finckley plantation became the staging area from
which Swedish immigrants, brought by Swenson, entered other
parts of Texas. It was here that Swante Palm, Swenson's uncle,
came in 1844, to be followed by Swenson's sister, Anna Kristina,
in 1847. She became the second Swede in Texas to marry an
American (her brother, of course, had been the first) . In the sum­mer
of 1850, less than a year after coming to America, Anna
Kristina married William Dyer, Swenson's overseer. The Dyers
were the first to leave the Finckley estate, settling on a tract of
land owned by Swenson on Brushy Creek north of Austin.
At Finckley, Swenson dealt with America's ugliest institu­tion-
slavery-daily and at close range. As owner of Finckley,
he owned some 40 slaves and a plantation of 400-500 acres, al­most
all of which was devoted to cotton production. His attitudes
toward the institution seem to have been, at best, ambivalent.
Though he did not, like Swante Palm, ever defend slavery (see
Chapter 10), S.M. Swenson depended on slave labor for the pros­perity
of his plantation. But he was apparently concerned about
the physical well-being of his slaves, opposed their maltreatment,
and strove to keep slave families together whenever possible.
58
In addition to operating his cotton plantation, Swenson
had been busy buying up land anywhere it was cheap, but espe­cially
along advantageous routes to expansion. A friendship with
Sam Houston, dating back to S.M.'s first year in Texas, allowed
Swenson to purchase land along what would eventually become
the right-of-way for the Buffalo Bayou, Brazos, and Colorado Rail­road.
In 1839 he learned that the permanent Texas state capital
would be relocated to Austin from Columbia, so he bought enor­mous
parcels in advance of the relocation and subsequent sharp
rise in land values .8 By 1860 he had accumulated over 128,000
acres in Travis County. 9
First he established his mercantile business, which he oper­ated
with his uncle Swante Palm as junior partner; by October
1850 he was already running advertisements in the Texas State
Gazette. From the beginning Swenson was known as a shrewd
businessman, one who was willing to take risks in inventory to
stock new items which he felt the public might buy. (Swenson
is usually credited with being the man who introduced Mr. Colt's
revolver to Texas in his Austin emporium: he advertised the fact
in the May 10, 1851, issue of the Gazette.) Swenson noted that
he stocked, among other things,
boots and shoes, Hats, Hardware, Holloware,
Earthenware, Woodware, Blacksmith's tools, Iron,
Steel and Nails; a General Assortment of Groceries,
Flour, Tobacco, Rice, etc; whiskey, brandies, Hol­land
gin, Rum, Sherry, Madeira, Port and Claret
wine by the box or the barrel, oils, Paints,
Window-Glass and Putty, Bagging and Bale Rope,
Powder Shot and Lead; cooking stoves and office
stoves, ploughs, hoes, etc. 10
Soon he began construction of the Avenue Hotel down­town,
which would soon be the largest hotel in the capital city.
Austin had a total population of just 629 in 1850, but Swenson
had faith in the city's growth potential. As soon as "Swenson and
Co." was turning a reasonable profit, he began acquiring even
more downtown properties, concentrating on Congress Avenue.
By the outbreak of the Civil War he owned the equivalent of 12
square blocks of prime mercantile real estate in the heart of the
growing capital.
59
Jeanette Long Swenson never recovered her health, and
in November 1850 she died in her family home in Tennessee.
Swenson had, on numerous occasions, met her dearest friend,
Susan Hudson McCready, an orphan who had grown up on
the plantation which adjoined that of Jeanette's family in Tennes­see.
His burgeoning business ventures had kept him in Austin
during his wife's final illness. To his great chagrin, he was not
even able to make it to Tennessee in time for her funeral. But
by correspondence S.M. Swenson was able to make his interest
clear to Miss McCready, and she agreed to marry him as soon
as he was able to put aside his frantic preparations to open his
Austin business. Anna Swenson Dyer and her husband came
to Austin to help her brother set up house. Finally in 1851 he
was able to go to Tennessee, where he and Susan McCready
were married. 11
II:..;
Susan M cCready Swenson
60
As for the purpose of enticing Swedes to Texas, more sig­nificant
than his business operations was Swenson's October 3,
1850, purchase of a 182-acre tract of land one and a half miles
east of Austin from Thomas T Fauntleroy, a former army colonel.
Acquisition of the adjoining parcels quickly increased the size of
the estate to nearly 400 acres on a plateau overlooking the Colo­rado
River; here Swenson would build his Austin home, which
would also be the first American home for many Swedish immi­grants.
He named the place "Govalle."
There has been considerable misunderstanding about the
nature of Govalle and the origin of its unusual name. The usual
explanation-not very linguistically convincing, but commonly
repeated-is that "Govalle" came from the Swedish SmaIand
dialect verb phrase grl valla, "graze, or tend cattle, sheep, etc."
Another derivation has it stemming from the noun phrase god vall,
"good pastures." 12 In either case, it would seem that Swenson
intended Govalle to be as much (or even more) a sheep and cattle
ranch as it was a cotton plantation. The small number of hands
that worked there in the 1850's and 1860's-never more than a
dozen or so-was in marked contrast to the 40 slaves he had
needed to work the Finckley plantation. The geography of the
area must also have suggested sheep and cattle grazing as more
natural and practical than cotton production. By 1862, for
example, Swenson was grazing more than 1,500 sheep and an
unknown number of cattle at Govalle. 13
Govalle was to be Swenson's home for over a decade.
There his five children (Sarah, 1852-1879; Eric, 1855-1945; Ebba,
1858-1879; Swen Albin, 1860-1927; and Mary Eleanora, 1862-
1958) were born. 14 Even after Swenson's secretive departure for
Mexico in 1863, Mrs. Swenson and the children continued to live
at Govalle until the end of the Civil War, when they joined Swen­son
in New Orleans.
One researcher states15 that Swenson sold his slaves just
prior to the Civil War and implies that some of them had been
working in Austin . While Swenson had sold his own slaves before
moving to Austin, the new Govalle enterprise apparently still
required some slave assistance. A contract in Swenson's handwrit­ing
records his need of two male slaves, named Tom and Dan,
whom he hired for a period of four months in 1854 from Mr.
E.M. Renie of Austin. 16 He renewed the contract twice, keeping
61
Swen Albin Swenson
the slaves until August 1855. By then there were more than 100
Swedes in the Austin area, some of whom were now settling down
on land of their own. Thus there may have been a temporary
labor shortage at Govalle, which Swenson had to make good with
slaves. But his ideal was to operate Govalle with Swedish labor,
constantly cycling immigrants onto his lands to work off their
passage and then moving them onto land of their own, purchased
at favorable but still profitable rates from Swenson himself.
It is impossible to state with any accuracy how many
Swedes arrived in Texas as contract laborers or even how many
arrived on prepaid tickets sent from Austin by Swenson to his
brother Johan Swenson in Barkeryd, but it is known that three­fourths
of the 100 immigrants who arrived in 1867 worked a year
for Swenson or his agents to repay their passage to Texas. The
out-of-pocket expenses for prepaid tickets could tie up a consider-
62
able amount of capital for some time: for instance, another large
group of 70 to 80 immigrants cost Swenson more than 10,000
riksdaler (over $2,500) in 1870.17 The economic crises associated
with the depression of 1873 "cut short the flourishing career of
Swenson's [immigration] bureau.,,18 Perhaps even more impor­tant
was the step-by-step curtailment of contract labor that culmi­nated
in its total abolition in the Foran Act of 1885. But, by that
point, the emigration was self-sustaining: 5,000 more Swedes
arrived in Texas over the next 20 years without Swenson's help.
The nagging problems-moral and economic-raised by
slavery had lain behind Swenson's decision to sell his Richmond
property (with its attendant slaves) and to start over in Austin,
employing mostly hired or indentured labor from Sweden. But
the growing sense of fear and division that spread through the
state in the 1850's did not leave S.M. Swenson, as a former slave
owner, untouched.
Pro-Southern sentiments were strong in Texas and grow­ing
stronger. Men like Swenson and Governor Sam Houston tried
desperately to stem the secessionist tide, but in vain. Soon violence
was close to the surface, and the divisiveness became open. The
Epiphany Episcopalian Church in Austin, for example, of which
both Swenson and Palm had been members, split in two over
the secession question; Swenson joined the "rich, influential
Northerners" who established Christ's Church (eventually re­united
with Epiphany as St. David's) in 1856. 19
v ;'t uij~l~ . ~=-- ~ . Of'
~CiifMt~ - -- , ' ~ .--- ~- ~_I <~~. ::--) \
h '" r-GScoH.SWENSON.) \
'./ .c >~
• . /7/./('/// •• /1". I(/.;/,.
,~-
_Xy II /;/n il'~' I" .- _.
(' , . .', ~- '. ~~~-~'---.:::7' ~tltais
1../ f /.,;- --, -- - - -_ c... - ''':''' ;>::2::~. .-- --
-;1;,..'1:"" ;l'rn/~,/,(//(/-yfrI7111 ///YN//IY -
'=-~_~ J
----.-~~~.. -~".-----
63
A "Vigilance Committee" was formed in Austin to keep
an eye on citizens with pro-Union sympathies. Swenson realized
that his outspoken attitudes were now endangering his life and
his family.
On April 1, 1861, just a few days before Fort Sumter was
attacked, Carl Gustaf and August Palm borrowed $30,000 from
Swenson to start "Palm Brothers and Company.,,20 Their inten­tion
was to transact "business of a mercantile character" for six
years. By that time the impending war should be over. Swenson
rented his own storehouses and warehouses in the Swenson
Building on Congress Avenue to his cousins for $1,200 a year,
payable quarterly. Some $26,000 in insured goods - Swenson's
entire inventory in 1861-were also to be turned back to him
after six years. This silent partnership not only made the Palm
brothers the richest Swedes in Texas (for six years) but also trans­ferred
Swenson's vast financial responsibilities to his relatives,
who now had to act in his stead and on his behalf, since uncle
Swante Palm also held Swenson's power of attorney.
One of the most colorful stories told of S.M. Swenson's
last days in Texas concerns the hiding of his hoarde of gold:
[Swenson] pried loose the bricks in the fireplace
and picked them out one by one. Then he
started to dig a big hole underneath. It was
rather soft and not as hard as he imagined it to
be. He dug until he thought it was deep
enough, then he deposited one of the heavy tin
boxes in the hole. He looked into the box to see
that everything was all right. That [sic] the slip
on which was written, ["] $10,000 by actual
count;' was laid on top. Then he covered the
box with a piece of ducking and put the dirt
back. He tramped and tried to get the dirt back
again, but he had a considerable heap of it left. 21
The story goes on to relate how Swenson then buried a
further $10,000 in gold under the other fireplace and had the
entire area mortared over the next day, with no one the wiser.
After the Civil War he sent word to Palm of the cache. Palm
then went to Govalle and dug up the fortune and returned it
to his grateful nephew. (Another version of this story has Swante
fl4
Palm hiding S.M. Swenson's gold under his own hearth at the
"consulate" on E. Ninth Street-that version insists that $40,000
in gold rested under the fireplace for four years. )22
Oddly enough, this colorful story is probably true because
an eyewitness recorded her own version. In the account that she
wrote to correct the errors in August Anderson's biography of
her uncle, Jeanette Dyer Davis, daughter of Anna Kristina Swen­son
and William Dyer, states that the sum buried was unques­tionably
$40,000 in gold but that it was buried at Govalle, not
in Austin: "I was there, and I remember it well." 23
Realizing that his continued presence in Austin also en­~
angered his wife and children, Swenson planned his escape.
D sing his rheumatism as a pretext for visiting the hot springs of
Monterrey, Mexico, he applied for and received permission from
the governor to leave Texas for Mexico. In the company that was
to travel with him were Judge Amos Morrill and a "fervent union­ist,"
Sam Harris, as well as Morgan Hamilton, the brother of
Jack Hamilton (later governor of Texas). Swenson crossed into
Matamoros just ahead of army patrols sent out particularly to
seize him.24
Despite the presence of thousands of Texans in Mexico,
Swenson was uncomfortable and uneasy being away from his
family and business. He eventually arrived in Monterrey, where
the governor and president received him courteously, but the war
and the struggle over the succession to the crown of Mexico meant
further difficulties. Continuing to buy cotton, Swenson stored it
in warehouses until a break in the fighting (and the aid of his
old friend Consul Lorich in New York) permitted him to ship
some 4,700 bales at a profit of more than $25,000. One shipload
of this cotton was even sent to Sweden and sold in Goteborg. In
the summer of 1864 Swenson managed to make another trip to
Sweden to see his mother, stopping in Washington on the return
voyage to visit with President Abraham Lincoln, who commented
on the vital and strategic importance played by Texas in the closing
phases of the war. Swenson returned to New Orleans, where he
was quarantined because yellow fever was raging there as well
as in Galveston. New Orleans was like a city besieged-children
roamed the city in packs begging for food .
After the war's end Swenson decided not to return per­manently
to Texas, where he still had enemies. The house he had
65
been building in Austin since 1860, on a scale and in a style to
rival the Pease mansion, remained unfinished and soon became
a picturesque ruin. (Local tradition says that the main building
of Huston-Tillotson College was built on the site of "Swenson's
Ruin.") Govalle itself was sold in 1871 for more than $50,000,
and soon almost every trace of Swenson's presence on the land
had apparently disappeared. 25
Despite his losses during the war, S.M. Swenson was still
one of the wealthiest men in Texas, with cash assets valued at
over $275,000 and vast landholdings in Austin and North Texas
worth even more.26
But Swenson decided to settle in New Orleans, where he
had already established a large mercantile business with William
Perkins. A sugar plantation in Texas (purchased in 1860) near
the Louisiana border was proving to be very profitable. By 1880
Swenson had become sole owner of four sugar plantations, and
by 1891 each was producing what was generally regarded to be
"the finest sugar in Louisiana. "27 The" Swenson touch," evi­dent
from his earliest days in Austin, when "the day Swenson
did not make $1,000 profit was reckoned a failure," became, if
anything, even surer after his departure from the Lone Star State.
Ultimately Swenson decided to manage his combined
southern operations from outside the region; he moved his base
of operations to New York in 1866. There he and Perkins re­opened
the Swenson, Perkins Co. on Wall Street. That soon be­came
the banking firm of S.M. Swenson & Sons, which later
merged with National City Bank to become the First National
City Bank of New York, the second largest bank in America. 28
With Swenson's move to New York, his pioneering days
as a Swedish colonist were over. His next enterprise was the crea­tion
of the S. M. S. cattle ranches, one of the greatest cattle empires
in the history of the state.
66
7
The First IDlDligrant
Swante Palm
With the notable exception of his nephew, S.M. Swenson,
no one did more to encourage immigration to Texas
or to nurture the aspirations of the immigrants than
Swante Palm. He pioneered the pathway to Texas and played
a major role in the development of Swedish-American cultural
life in the Lone Star State. Much of what he did has been inaccu­rately
reported, often even in the standard sources. Palm's life,
however, was a fascinating one, even without embellishment.
Born onJanuary 13, 1815, at Biisthult, a farm just south of
Barkeryd Lake, Swante Palm showed early signs of intellectual
promise.! He was tutored by the sexton of the Barkeryd parish
church in Swedish, Latin, English, French, German, and mathe­matics.
Although this was the only formal education he received,
it stood him in good stead and permitted him to leave the family
farm and strike out on his own. While his nephew Swen (whose
mother, Margareta, was Palm's sister and elder by some 20 years)
was working as a bookkeeper in Eksjo, Palm was riding the circuit
of local courts in three districts, first as apprentice scribe, then
scribe, to the bailiff. These positions demanded a quick mind and
a quick pen (as well as decent handwriting), for much of the work
consisted of recording the proceedings of the various judicial courts.
Finally, in 1841, Palm became rural clerk (landskanslist) for the
cities of Kalmar and Jonkoping, which were much larger than
the villages of Smaland in which he had worked up to that time.
67
Swanie Palm
Kalmar-in the 19th century it was spelled' 'Calmar"­soon
became his permanent home, when he was appointed to the
Gota Court of Appeals, one of the high courts of Sweden, similar
to an American federal court. 2
Sometime during the next three years he created the sur­name
by which he was henceforth known. He was christened Swen
Andersson, following the traditional patronymic system common
in Sweden a hundred years ago and still in use today in Iceland
(see Chapter 6, note 1). Swen Andersson did as so many other
immigrants were to do after him: he invented a new name. Actu­ally,
there was a native precedent for taking a name like' 'Palm."
The military authorities were also dismayed by the repetitions
created by the patronymic system and often issued new soldatnamn
or "soldiers' names" (usually one brisk syllable in length, like
"Brand" or "Frid") to new recruits.
The Christian name" Swante," as we have seen with his
namesake Swen "Swante" Magnus Swenson, is a diminutive,
like "Jimmy" or "Tommy" in English; in the extended Swenson-
68
Andersson family, it clearly helped to distinguish nephew from
uncle. And the Palm name became normative for all of Swante's
brothers who followed him in the chain migration to Texas; they
stepped on board the emigrant ship surnamed Andersson and
arrived in America named Palm.
Swante Palm edited the weekly newspaper Calmar-Posten, in
Kalmar between 1841 and his emigration in 1844. It was largely
an honorary position, but one which supplied a small and badly
needed income. During this same period he also fell unhappily
in love. By the beginning of 1844 neither his debts nor his roman­tic
prospects seemed to show signs of improvement, so his thoughts
turned to his prospering nephew's entreaties to join him in the
Republic of Texas.3
According to a story which Palm himself may have helped
circulate, the waning days of King Carl XIV J ohan were fraught
with difficulty for publishers as the increasingly paranoid monarch
saw cabals and conspirators everywhere, their every move sup­posedly
reported to and supported by the public in the pages of
the popular press. Carl Johan invoked 100-year-old sedition and
censorship laws to suppress the newspapers for the first and only
time in Swedish history, a dark era for Swedish journalistic free­dom.
Palm, as editor of Calmar-Posten, may have tangled with the
law, but a perusal of the issues he edited shows only three or four
mild editorial comments (signed "Najad" -"Naiad," Palm's
nom de plume) in the three years of his editorship. Most editorial
energy was expended in a seemingly endless diatribe against the
rival Kalmar newspaper, Barometern, over subscription tactics and
the personal political convictions of the respective editors. Calmar­Posten
was, in fact, quite conservative, while Barometern espoused
the more radical views of its editor, Dr. Engstrom. 4
For these reasons, in addition to the warm and genuine
respect his private writings always displayed toward the Bernadotte
dynasty, it seems hard to credit trouble with the censor as a major
factor in Palm's decision to emigrate. He himself mentioned only
his debts and his unrequited love affair, but perhaps Dr. Eng­strom's
attacks on him (he was called a "little boy" and a "young
bantam" in the pages of Barometern) might have helped his decision.
S.M. Swenson contacted both Palm and Palm's elder
brother, Gustaf, almost immediately after his own arrival in
69
Texas, asking them to join him in his new business ventures.
Their response must have been positive, for in March of 1839
Swenson wrote to no less a partnership than McKinney and
Williams,5 two of his oldest friends in Galveston, to introduce
"my uncles Gustavus and Swen Palm" and to request that the
wealthy Texans advance the Palms money "sufficient for expenses
to this place [Richmond].,,6 But it was to be five years before
"uncle Swen" arrived and a full decade until "uncle Gustavus"
joined him. By then Swen Magnus Swenson was well on his way
to becoming a millionaire.
Swante Palm sailed from Kalmar on board the copper­hulled
brig Superb on May 1, 1844, bound for New York. His
account of that voyage is one of the earliest made by an actual
Swedish emigrant and provides a few intimate glimpses into life
aboard an emigrant vessel in the earliest days of the Scandinavian
transatlantic migration. 7
There were 13 passengers, emigrants all, three of whom
were returning to North America after a visit home. One of these
was J.P. Hagerlund, a former merchant seaman aboard the
Swedish frigate oj Chapman and now a merchant in S.M. Swen­son's
employ. He had lived in Richmond, Texas, for several years
after being stranded in America in 1826 when the aj Chapman
was sold. Another veteran was James Brodie, whom Palm incor­rectly
identifies as a Swede: he was actually born in Scotland.
Like several of the crewmen, Brodie had quite a drinking prob­lem
during the voyage, and drinking seems to be about the only
vice sternly condemned by the otherwise tolerant Palm.
Finally, there was Palm's friend and traveling companion,
Eugen Conrad Gullbrandsson, a rather shadowy figure about
whom little is known. It is uncertain exactly where in Sweden
he was born, but in 1844 he was just over 19 years old. He must
have been a good friend of Palm's, because a mutual acquain­tance
read a farewell poem composed especially for their emigra­tion
from Kalmar, addressed to both Gullbrandsson and Palm.
It is quite likely that Palm had persuaded young Gullbrandsson
to join him on the long road to Texas.8
On May 3 the Superb passed the Norwegian coast with a
good southeasterly breeze. The captain, a Swede named Nissen,
was a devout Methodist and held divine worship on the afterdeck.
By May 6 they were passing the Shetlands and the Orkneys and
70
heading out into the Atlantic. An imaginary hunting society leveled
"fines" for shooting imaginary game-fines levied in "liquid
goods," sherry or port. The players soon ran out of capital,
however, and the drinking society foundered.
During the following five weeks, my diary is
concerned only with storm, sea-sickness, and
calm, whales, porpoises and terns. . . . Any
specific "dangers at sea" I cannot recall and only
a couple of hard storms, during one of which
the boatswain got a rope wrapped around his
neck and remained hanging awhile in a
situation which suggested that he would be
either hanged or drowned. Another night we
lost part of the foremast. . . . At 7 in the
morning on the 18th we had land in sight on
both sides of the entrance to New York harbor.
The coastlines wore their prettiest greenery.
Highlighted by dark-green, white and pleasant,
the groves of trees and everything seemed to
beckon us welcome. 9
After coming ashore at Castle Garden, Palm wandered
out into the streets of New York, where the bustle and spectacle
fascinated him - from glassblowers in the streets to massive polit­ical
rallies. A few days later he traveled by steamer up the Hudson
to Albany and Buffalo, where his meager funds dried up. But
soon, "like some kind of Swedish-American Peddler:' he got a
traveling sales job, covering the countryside for Swedish business­men
in Buffalo. It was now high summer, and he was wary of
heading directly into the brutal Central Texas heat, so he spent
the next five and a half months covering 700 miles on foot and
another 425 miles on the decks of steam and canal boats in New
York, Pennsylvania, Ohio, and Kentucky. Palm's friend Conrad
Gullbrandsson, meanwhile, remained in New York working for
a tanner; he, too, wished to await cooler weather before heading
west. Finally on December 9 the friends decided that conditions
in Texas were satisfactory, so they met in Louisville and boarded
a steamer bound for New Orleans. There they found letters from
71
S.M. Swenson welcoming them to Texas. On December 20 they
boarded another steamship in New Orleans and landed in Gal­veston
on the 23rd. They reached Houston on Christmas Day,
and by twilight the next day they had ridden to Swenson's plan­tation,
Finckley.1O
"Uncle Palm" helped Swenson with his accounts and
books and maintained a correspondence with Sweden, keeping
their relatives informed of Swenson's steady successes in America.
Plans were already under way in 1845 for Swenson's first return
visit to his mother country, but, because of his burgeoning busi­ness
activities, the trip had to be postponed for two years.
Less than two years after his arrival Palm had formed a
mercantile partnership of his own with C.P. Flack of Seguin.
Swenson helped finance "Flack and Palm Co." of Columbia in
September 1846. They were to deal in "vending goods, wares
and merchandise;' and Palm was to be the junior partner. But
in May 1846, less than four months before going into business
with Flack, Palm had become postmaster in La Grange. Because
of the constant traveling and the demands of his new job, he
decided to sell the business (and inventory) to his partner. Flack's
share was $1,919 and Palm's a meager $163.04. Despite his skill
in managing Swenson's affairs, this entrepreneurial fiasco might
have given rise to the stories of Palm's financial fuzzy-headedness
and the image he was later to project of an impractical, absent­minded
bookworm. 11
Before leaving Sweden in 1836, S.M. Swenson
had made the acquaintance of Admiral, later Baron,
N ordenskiold, the former commander of the
Swedish frigate af Chapman. Nordenskiold was, in
turn, a good friend of Baron Gyllengranat, the
former commander of the other Swedish warship,
Tapperheten, which was to be sold with af Chapman
to the new republic of Colombia by the Swedish gov­ernment
in 1826. Because Sweden was unable to
recognize diplomatically the revolutionary govern­ment
of Colombia, however, the sale was stopped,
and the vessels sailed to New York, eventually to
be sold at auction. Many of the nearly 700 Swedish
crew members were stranded in the New World
72
without the funds for repatriation. Many, like Palm's
traveling companion in 1844, the plucky J.P. Hager­lund
(a sailor from aJChapman), went ashore in New
York and made their way westward. (By a strange
turn offate, Hagerlund wound up in Texas in 1837
and within two years was working for none other
than S.M. Swenson.)
A few of the stranded sailors stayed in New
York itself. The most famous of them was Olof Hed­strom
(from aJ Chapman), who married an American
girl, converted to Methodism, and opened a Meth­odist
seamen's hostel in a demasted ship right in
the harbor. Hedstrom's kindness to arriving immi­grants
was soon well known; he and his brother,
Jonas, were largely responsible for routing immi­grants
(among them Erik Jansson and his followers)
to Illinois and the Midwest. More important for
Swedes bound for Texas was the friendship struck
up between S.M. Swenson and Olof Hedstrom in
the 1870's. Many of them were met at the pier by
Hedstrom and taken to Swenson's New York immi­grant
hotel before they set out for Texas on the train.
Other Swedish sailors, such as Custaf Ceder,
a seaman aboard Tapperheten who was the son of
Palm's former tutor, did not fare as well. Some were
sent ahead to Colombia, probably to await the ar­rival
of their vessels after the intended transfer to
the Colombian fleet. Many of these seamen were
never heard from again. Ten years after the so-called
"aJ Chapman affair;' both former commanders were
still quite concerned about the fate of their ship­mates
and urged Swenson, while he was in America,
to find out all he could about their whereabouts.
He relayed the little he was able to discover to Nor­denskiold
in 1840 after he reached Texas. Nearly
a decade later, since Swante Palm was acquainted
with one of the hapless Swedes - Custaf Ceder­Swenson
pressed his uncle to help find them. 12
This was the background for one of the strang­est
incidents in the early days of the Swedish colony
in Texas, Swante Palm's departure for the Isthmus
of Panama in the spring of 1849 as a "secretary in
the diplomatic service." Palm's stay in Panama has
73
long been somewhat puzzling, if not outright mys­terious,
but the basic facts are now available.
In the 1840's the Isthmus of Panama belonged
to Colombia, a new republic carved out of the last
remnants of the old viceroyalty of Nueva Granada.
The redoubtable Captain William "Peg Leg" Ward,
colorful politician and hero of the Texas Revolution,
was heading for the Isthmus of Panama on a diplo­matic
matter, according to one source, as a military
adviser to Colombia. Palm's mission had nothing in
common with Ward's, save the destination, but the
Texan's presence certainly made the long trip a bit
less dangerous for Palm.
Swante Palm was an unofficial representative of
the Swedish diplomatic corps, urged to undertake the
journey by Consul Severin Lorich in New York on
behalf of the Swedish captains, Nordenskiold and
Gyllengranat. Lorich was an old friend of Swenson's,
too, so the mission must have been undertaken more
out of a sense of personal honor than official diplo­matic
necessity. Palm's contact in Panama was Con­sul
Charles Zachrisson. The mystery surrounding
Palm's journey arises from its sensitivity: why did
Lorich not write his counterpart, Zachrisson, for
information about the missing sailors instead of ask­ing
Palm to make the long and hazardous journey
in person?
But perhaps it was Palm's irrepressible curiosity
that sent him forth. He must have relished the chance
to see such exotic places-and read about them: Har­ry
Ransom remarked that Palm wanted to take a
wagonload of books with him but was eventually dis­suaded
by Captain Ward. 13 At any rate, he reached
the isthmus in the spring of 1849 and made contact
with' 'Don Carlos" Zachrisson. He soon learned that
his old friend Ceder had died of yellow fever in 1827,
shortly after arriving in Cartagena. He had written
a number ofletters to his father (Palm's former tutor),
but they had been intercepted by the authorities and
suppressed, so no one in Sweden had heard of his
fate . (Another aspect of the mystery is who in Carta­gena,
besides Zachrisson, could have read the con­tents
of Ceder's Swedish letters!)14
74
After learning of his friend's sad fate, Palm
stayed a year in Panama as secretary to Consul Zach­risson
before returning to Texas. By 1850 he was
back in the Lone Star State, where, save for two trips
back to Sweden, he was to remain for the next 50
years. Panama apparently cured his wanderlust.
On his return from Pan