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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 o \ ) / . "l ;! ) . s : "1 /~. SWEDEN NORWAY \ ~ L r' ) / ) I Varmland GERMANY 22 Oq J .(.) ..::: ~ ~ U.S.S.R. 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
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Title | Swedish Texans |
Date-Original | 1990 |
Subject |
Swedish Americans -- Texas -- History. Texas -- History. |
Description | Examines the accomplishments of Swedes in Texas, looking at the ways in which they adapted their customs to life in the New World. |
Creator | Scott, Larry E. (Larry Emil), 1947- |
Publisher | University of Texas Institute of Texan Cultures at San Antonio |
Type | text |
Format | |
Form/Genre | Books |
Language | eng |
Finding Aid | http://www.lib.utexas.edu/taro/utsa/00123/utsa-00123.html |
Local Subject | Texas History |
Rights | http://lib.utsa.edu/specialcollections/reproductions/copyright |
Digital Publisher | University of Texas at San Antonio |
Date-Digital | 2012-07-03 |
Collection | University of Texas at San Antonio. Institute of Texan Cultures Records |
Transcript | 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 o \ ) / . "l ;! ) . s : "1 /~. SWEDEN NORWAY \ ~ L r' ) / ) I Varmland GERMANY 22 Oq J .(.) ..::: ~ ~ U.S.S.R. 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 |
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