Fort Worth

Fort Worth

(Severin)

Biographies Alf. L. Scott and T. J. Westerberg

Fort Worth, the fourth largest city in Texas, is located thirty-two miles west of Dallas. The west branch of the Trinity River flows through it. It is also known as “Panther City.” The fort that the name refers to was built during a time when the Trinity Valley was the western border of American civilization. The purpose of the fort was to protect the new pioneers and their settlements against barbarism and the violence of the wild Indians. Troops were stationed here in the spring of 1849, but they were removed only four years later. Fort Worth was now close to sharing the destiny of other newly established settlements who had to take flight as they were too weak to defend themselves. Among the pioneers of the community of Fort Worth there were some men who were not discouraged at the first sign of adversity; among those were E. M. Dagget, K. M. Van Zandt, C. M. Peak and J. Peter Smith. These men now got together and cooperated in building the settlement and securing its future. A big step in that direction was taken when the site of government was moved from Birdville to Fort Worth in 1860. The troubled times that followed the Civil War demanded the best and the brightest of men and kept the population from reaching 1000 up to the 1870’s. The area where the citys most prominent business buildings are located between 4^th and 9^th Streets was then an open area where cattle drivers from the open prairies camped over night on their way to Kansas City with their herds of cattle. A little further south where the large central station is now located Captain Dagget had his property.

Corn and cotton were the foremost farm products in the area. They soon discovered however that wheat could be produced profitably. Communications were almost impossible since there was no railroad closer than the coast and south Texas. At the end of the 1850’s, or soon before the war, a communication line to St. Louis, Missouri, was opened through the building of the “Southern Pacific Mail Route” that made regular trips with mail-cars between St. Louis and Red River and from there across northern and western Texas to San Francisco.

As late as 1876, the first railroad to Fort Worth was built, and with that a new era in the history of Fort Worth and Tarrant County began. The population in Tarrant County, including Fort Worth, was in 1870 only 5,78 8. The city of Fort Worth now has a population of 110,000 and a military post with 35,000 soldiers and officers. Fort Worth is one of the most important railroad centers of the Southwest with ten railroad systems and eighteen railroads. In addition to passenger traffic, no less than 1,216,692 freight cars passed through in 1917. Fort Worth now holds a financially important position. The city has eleven banks with a capital and surplus of $6,662,000 deposits of over $50,000,000 and $60,000,000 in assets and resources. The Fort Worth cattle market and the slaughter houses are third in the United States in importance and size. Over 1,500,000 head of cattle are slaughtered yearly. To the Fort Worth market 3,542,601 cattle and hogs were brought in 1917. The importance of Fort Worth as a market can best be understood by the following short statistic for 1917 showing the number of products that passed through the Fort Worth market:

Cattle................................. $250,000,000

Cotton................................. $80,000,000

Grain................................... $45,000,000

Peanuts.................................. $2,000,000

Cream ...................................$1,400,000

Poultry & Eggs ........................$600,000

Sum of Products . $379,000,000

Fort Worth has also followed the times in manufacturing. The Chevrolet Motor Car Company represents a capital of $500,000 and has factory capacity of 30,000 cars per year. A new automobile factory is being built for the Texas Motor Car Company at a cost of $300,000.

Among other companies worth mentioning are two mills with a capacity of 3,000 barrels per day, and seventeen grain elevators with a capacity of 4,885,000 bushels.

The city has 216 miles of paved streets; 30 beautiful parks with an area of 5,800 acres. A beautiful little lake three and a half miles wide and eighteen miles long on the outskirts of town is a frequently visited recreational area. Fort Worth has one university, two academies, thirty-nine schools and one hundred churches. In 1917 two Army posts were established. Camp Bowie with 27,000 officers and soldiers and Taliaferro with 7,000 officers and soldiers. The latter is a practice area for aviation. Swedes began moving to this outpost of civilization in the beginning of the 1870’s. In 1873 we can find the brothers, Charles, August, and Andrew Hagg in Fort Worth. Their parents arrived in 1882. John and Oscar Peterson bought land north of the city in 1874 where they are still on their beautiful farms. Between the years 1880-1885, the Swedes, J. G. Anderson, Pete Larson, J. Weeman, Nickolaus Osterman, A. Sandegard, Oscar Martinson and Gus. Forsell arrived. John Widerkrantz and C. W. Johnson came here in 1889. At the beginning of 1890, A.M. Anderson, Mrs. Fogelin, C. J. Johnson, H. Peterson, Oscar Krantz, Mrs. Gerda Taylor and Aug. Bragg arrived. Most of these countrymen still live here. They have seen Fort Worth grow from a small market town to one of the foremost cities in Texas and have grown up with an interest in the community. There are now quite a few Swedes in Fort Worth. There are two churches in the city; one Lutheran and one Methodist.

Keller, a small market town 15 miles northeast of Fort Worth has only a few Swedish families: John Peterson, Oscar Peterson, J. G. Johnson, Aug. Bragg, all farmers, and further northwest of Keller, O. Olson and Andrew Peterson. These Swedes are what you could call large farmers. They mainly grow wheat and raise cattle. Cotton is also grown with great success. Oscar Peterson and Jno. Peterson may have been the first to move to this area in 1874. They came here as railroad workers during the building of the new railroad.

Extracted from: Swedes In Texas In Words and Pictures,

English Translation, 1838 - 1918