By: Tess Lynch
Swedish immigration has made its mark on Austin in a number of ways. It is evident not only in material buildings but even in the names of areas around the city, like New Sweden and Lund. Sven Magnus Swenson was the first individual to lead a large-scale immigration of Swedish people to Texas, after he arrived in 1838 and became friends with Sam Houston. Swenson’s personal stamp on Swedish history in Austin shows in the East Austin neighborhood of Govalle, which comes from the name of his property there, which he called “GaValla,” which is “a Swedish term that...means ‘good grazing land.’”
According to the University of Texas at San Antonio Institute of Texan Cultures, most Swedes arrived in Texas between 1848 and 1910. This was in large part due to Swenson’s “Swedish pipeline,” in which he and Swante Palm, his uncle, paid for the immigration of Swedish individuals “in exchange for one year of work on his plantation,” which was “possibly because of his disapproval of slave labor.” Like immigrants from other parts of the world, Swedes immigrated for a variety of reasons, but one major reason for their immigration to Texas was religion. Many Swedish evangelicals landed in Austin because “Austin civic leaders such as Swante Palm actively encouraged Swedish immigration during the 1870s and ‘80s [and] many of those newcomers were evangelicals who felt oppressed by the state church back home.”
Initially, Swedish immigrants settled in rural areas “near urban centers,” but they later moved more regularly to urban areas. There was a neighborhood known as “Swedish Hill,” or Svenska Kullen in Swedish, “in downtown Austin [that] was home to almost 50 Swedish families. Swedish Hill, now often referred to as Swede Hill, had its origins in the 1870s, with the first group of Swedish immigrants to the area, who soon founded Swedish churches nearby. This neighborhood remained largely intact into the 20th century, as in the 1980s, it was “the best example in East Austin of a late nineteenth and early twentieth century residential neighborhood,” with most homes ranging in construction dates from the 1880s to 1930s. At this time, it was designated a historic district by the National Register of Historic Places, and the city designated two of the extant houses as historic structures. In the early days of Swedish immigration, Austin also had multiple Swedish-language and Swedish-focused newspapers in Texas, the longest-running of which was Texas-Posten, which began in 1896 and ran until 1982.
The Austin-based Swedish-language Texas Posten newspaper included news from across the state, including Church Announcements, or “Kyrkliga Meddelanden,” highlighting the importance of churches and religion to Swedish people in Texas
Lund, Texas is a small city in Travis County, originally called Pleasant Hill. The area “was the center of a large Swedish agricultural settlement that arose as an extension of the New Sweden area, about four miles west.” Religion is one of the key elements in many immigrants’ cultures, and one of the most important buildings in Lund was the church, Bethlehem Lutheran Church. It was built in 1899 for a congregation that came together in 1897 with almost 40 members. The church conducted service in Swedish until the 1930s, when it began conducting service in English. The church became an English-language church after World War II.
The building remained standing until 1980, when it was damaged by a tornado. It “had to be demolished, [and] a large brick structure with a bell tower was built to replace the historic church.” The church is still in existence today, and has an active community, with a website detailing the history of the parish and the Swedish community that built it. The church’s Swedish background is still evident in the surnames of many of the parishioners and church council members, with such names as Carlson, Samuelson, and Lundgren.
The church’s graveyard is an important indicator of the small town’s Swedish heritage as well as the history of the church itself. As discussed on the church’s website, there are monuments there from the church’s earliest days in the 19th century, as well as one “for Carl Johan Goranson made of Swedish granite and sent over from Sweden [which] marks the date 1903.” The current cemetery was created from the combination of two original graveyards, the Swedish Community Cemetery and the Cemetery of the Swedish Evangelical Lutheran Bethlehem Church of Lund.
Another Swedish community in the Austin area was the small town of New Sweden. Also located in Travis County, the town was originally known as Knight’s Ranch at its establishment in 1873, but upon the opening of the New Sweden Lutheran Church three years later, the town took its new name. The church grew quickly in the little town, and it was expanded multiple times before 1930. The population of New Sweden remained small throughout its history, with its population peaking at 104 in 1900, but although the town is small, its church community remains to this day.
Another church essential to the story of Swedes in Austin is the Swedish Evangelical Free Church, which originally was located in an 1890s-built wood-planked building in Decker in the eastern part of Travis County. As Swedish-Americans in the area became more integrated into American culture, the services, like at Bethlehem Lutheran Church, switched to English-language. The church moved from location to location as it grew and shrunk through the years, but the importance of the church’s Swedish heritage remained, even to those who aren’t Swedish; the pastor emeritus, Rob Harrell, said when he arrived that although he has no Scandinavian blood, “We didn’t want to take away the traditions. Some of those people have sat in those places all their lives.” Today, the church is known as Austin Oaks, and acknowledges on its website the importance of their “founding Swedish families.”
Left: The dedication of the then-new building of the Swedish Evangelical Free Church in 1925 Right: Austin Oaks’s modern-day Church Education Building
Within the city of Austin itself are the markers of Swedish immigration to the area. The Swedish Evangelical Lutheran Gethsemane Church was established officially in 1875, although its roots began in 1868 with 25 immigrants from Sweden. The church building until 1963, which is located at 16th Street and Congress, was built in 1881 in part from remnants of the burning of the old state capitol building. In 1914, the church began conducting service in English. The church community moved to Anderson Lane in north Austin in 1963, and since then, the church’s “Swedish heritage has grown to include a very international community of God’s people,” with members from countries including Cambodia, France, Japan, El Salvador, and Lebanon. The church continues to honor its Swedish heritage by hosting monthly meetings of the Scandinavian Club in its multi-purpose room, but also honors other heritages in its community with meetings of the Czech Historical Association, as well as local Texas heritage with the “Lone Star Lambdas” square dancing group. Swedish churches in the Austin area have been representative of the growth and expansion of central Texas through their growth in diversity and in many cases in their expansion out of Austin’s downtown and into more suburban reaches.
It is not only in churches that one can see the impact Swedes have had on the built environment of central Texas. Swedish immigration to the Austin area is also evident in institutions of higher education. Trinity Lutheran College opened in Round Rock in 1906 by Lutheran Swedish-Americans, and Texas Wesleyan College opened in Austin in 1912 by Methodist Swedish-Americans. Although neither college exists as opened anymore, Trinity Lutheran College merged with another college, Texas Lutheran, and became Texas Lutheran University. Texas Wesleyan College sold its assets to the University of Texas, and part of “the proceeds [were] used to establish the Texas Wesleyan Foundation which provided college scholarships for hundreds of children of Texas Swedish heritage.” Thus, the Swedish immigrant population’s contributions to education in the Austin area are still felt to this day.
Near the Swedish immigrant destinations of Decker and New Sweden is Manda, a now-abandoned “ghost town.” J.V. Morell, a blacksmith, moved his business to Manda, located in the northeastern portion of Travis County, from New Sweden in the 1880s, and as more people began moving to the small town, a church, Manda Methodist Church, was established in 1892. Though Manda initially grew to a population of 40 in 1900, and had a store, post office, and telephone lines connecting it to other Swedish-American towns in the area, the population began to decline to 20 in the 1930s, and in 1962, the church shuttered. Although this town is no longer lived-in, it still serves as a physical marker of Swedish-American culture in the Austin area.
Another piece of evidence of Swedish immigration to the Austin area comes from the name of the building that welcomes many new Austinites today: the Austin-Bergstrom International Airport. The airport is built on the site of the former Bergstrom Air Force Base, which opened in 1942 and named a year later for Swedish-American John A. E. Bergstrom, who “was the first Austinite killed in World War II.” In 1993, the base closed and “voters approved a bond issue for the construction of an Austin airport” there. As the then-current airport was located in what became the middle of the rapidly-growing city, it was necessary for the main passenger airport to move further out of the urban area, and the Austin-Bergstrom International Airport officially opened on May 23, 1999.
Although a small group, Swedish immigrants to Texas have made their mark on the city. From churches, to schools, to even an airport, the contributions of Swedish immigrants to Texas and Texans of Swedish descent have not gone unnoticed, and as the city has grown and changed, the buildings and institutions that they helped create have grown and changed as well. There are more than 160,000 Texans of Swedish descent today who would be able to see clear ties to their ancestors’ culture in modern-day metropolitan Austin.
References
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