Extracted from: Svensk-Amerika Berattar

Author: Folke Hedblom

Printed: 1982 in Swedish

ISBN 91 7021 397 6

TRANSLATION OF PAGES 101 – 115 by Jean Quist Sellstrom, July 21, 2007

PAGE 101 - AMONG COTTON PICKERS AND COWBOYS IN TEXAS.

A glance at the map of Swedish settlements in America shows immediately that it is - above all - in the Northern States where they settled down. The area South of the Mason & Dixon line, the traditional dividing line between the Northern and Southern States, has, as a rule, was not known to be tempting.

The sweaty climate and the enormous, unforested, flat land in the States of Texas and Kansas have evoked serious thought with most of them. But, it needed only a few pioneers that took themselves there so that thousands of Swedes would follow after them. People had direct contact with other people whom they knew and had already been found there, so it was easy to tell them how to travel there. In the same way, as in the Northern states, it was above all, the connections from person to person which was crucial that caused our immigrant stream to go there. It was like “drawing in a string.” The question about Texas made this individual immigration factor more effective than others since the most of them came from the same concentrated district area of Eksjö - Nässjö.

It is noticeable that some of the earliest 1800’s Swedish immigrants fantastically came to seek for themselves in Texas, furthest South, also. It was surely mostly an accident which happened to a young Smålänningar who had already come to America in 1836 and had worked in a business in New York, when his company sent him down to Texas in 1838. Texas was an independent Republic which had freed itself from Mexico. Later joining the United States in 1845. The 22 year old youngster, Svante Magnus Swenson, was enterprising and had a nose for business. He noticed soon that he had come to a place which offered him shining possibilities. He stayed down there, bought a landed property and got another big domain because he married himself to a rich widow. He planted his land with cotton and sugarcane with help of the Negro slaves, which came with buying the plantation, and, with Mexican workers. But their style of working was not satisfactory with the man from Småland. He must

get his own people from home so that they could be part of the whole. So began then a

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emigration to Texas of relatives, friends and acquaintances from Barkeryd, his home parish which is directly Northwest of Nässjö, and from other places in the vicinity. In the year 1860 there were 153 Swedes in Texas. By census count in 1900 there numbered over 4,300, and in 1910 there were about 11,000 counting them and their children!

It was after the end of the Civil War when migration came about in large scale. In 1867 about 100 persons came at one time to Forserums station near Nässjö with Texas as their destination. Swenson and others sent home tickets, and when the immigrants came to Texas they worked for one year “for passage”. Later, after that he could buy himself his own farmland and cultivate it. This went good for the most of them. When planned immigration stopped, it then continued by itself. People traveled to relatives and friends. They came to Austin, the Capitol, because among other things, the many girls from the Match Factory in Jönköping.

S. M. Swenson himself left Texas during the Civil War and settled in New York as a financier of big measure. He took good care of his relatives, not least of which his parents. The tombstone that lies over them in Barkeryd’s cemetery has an original inscription which shows of how this American millionaire of theirs and their equal life in Sweden in 1800.

“His strength stimulated by shoulder and wealth, hers was toward weaving rugs.”

It is a natural thing that this, in large, was a local, narrow outlook, migrating to Texas came to keep those of the common man aware in Sweden, out of the way. It was the broad stream to the Northern States, especially the upper Mid West, which first drew their attention. Texas was not found on our program for our lst trip which included first : Illinois and Minnesota. It was immediately after a prompting from Sweden’s Under Ambassador in Washington, Gunnar Jarring, which sent us over to Texas on a new expedition from the Archives in Uppsala who went on the first operation. Decision to begin there came in the form of a letter from Austin on New Year 1963 which among others came to the Julotta in Swedish still held in one of the States churches. It had been full already at 4:30 a.m. Christmas morning with a community which sang- “Var Hälsade sköna morgonstund” and other Swedish Christmas hymns, and Pastor Herbert Johnson, a Swede of the second generation, had preached in the old country dialect. It was surely unique. Julotta in Swedish then

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on the whole came about in the Northern States but here it was absolutely an exception.

With some personnel and equipment which we took earlier with us across the Atlantic on a freighter from Göteborg to New York in the Spring of 1964, we got a Volkswagen bus and headed down through the Southern States. That was when we saw so many Black people on the road and highways, and the flags which waved on poles where most often the Rebel flag from the Civil War, “The Confederate flag”, with it’s down sloping cross. We were amazed. Still after a hundred years the antagonism between the States in the North obviously was completely alive. At home we do not know much about the American Civil War, the slave war’s mighty scope and terrible bloody outpouring years of 1861-1865, However, the State of Texas was not so firmly engaged. There, the people had a different historical background. We noticed that the Confederate flag was not the usual one there. More often we saw Texas’s own flag, with a single star flag, the proud symbol of the “The Lone Star State”.

The 2nd of May we drove into Austin which had also been the Swedes headquarters down there. There, we met the man Texas Swedes grand old man, the then 80 year old Carl T. Widen, once a banker in Austin, cultural ..... and energetic chairman in the Swedish “Pioneer Association”, Texas Swedish community’s foremost authority. An unbelievably vigorous gentleman of an older type, who moves himself easily on street or stairs, has crystal clear intellect and is a leader and promoter in one row in a different context. His personal knowledge in question about Swedes ever since S. M. Swenson’s time is no doubt greater than anyone else. He was born in a preacher’s home in Iowa 1884. His father had, in his early childhood, followed with his family from Östergötland in 1868; his mother came as a child with her parents from Västergötland the next year. After studying at the University of Texas he has lived in Austin since the beginning of the 1900’s. He speaks and writes Swedish fluently. Since long ago he has lived in a roomy, one-story stone house in the city’s center, near the monumental State Capitol of Texas with it’s huge dome, built of beautiful, soft red sandstone (really hard granite!). The tall, modern houses now begin to shoot up like matchstick ashes on the high edge in this sensitive setting, where Widen’s home, shaded by real pecan trees still makes a lovely oasis and an outstanding cultural memory from the time when the Swedish language was heard daily on the streets of Austin.

In the center of the city lies the really big auditorium where the “Texas Swedish Pioneer Association” had once celebrated an anniversary with about 3,000 delegates. In the program they had a sermon in Swedish

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which made a cherished contribution. North of the center lies the big and distinguished state University , University of Texas, where several of the professors still in 1964 were of Swedish lineage, and spoke Swedish easily. In the last of the 1970’s people still taught in Swedish. Southeast of the actual city is found an area with the Swedish name GOVALLE (gå valle) where a large number of Swedes settled in this city. The name was interpreted in Texas/Swedish as “the good valley”. At one time it was the property of S. M. Swenson. There newcomers from Småland lived in a log cabin which was built in 1840 and which still remains. Through Carl Widen’s efforts it has been moved to a city park, Zilker Park, where it serves as a pioneer museum and is a valued meeting place for Swedes and others. It is probably the only Swedish Pioneers earliest residence which is still remaining. Not far from there lay a big military Flying Field, Bergstrom Field, named for an officer of Swedish ancestry.

It was out in the area North and East of Austin, “out on Decker”, that people find the old Swedish farming communities. They form nearly a half-circle, from Georgetown in the North to Elroy in the South, (see map on Page 105). Many of the names are Swedish, for instance: Palm Valley, Lund, Manda, and New Sweden. Flat land around New Sweden looks like Skåne, a fertile land with white farm houses in groves of trees, there they grow figs and mulberry trees, peaches and grape vines.

In the fields people raise corn, sugarcane and cotton. All the farmers have heard and learned Swedish but later some of them moved out to a new colony in Stamford and Eriksdal and their houses are uninhabitable and begin to collapse completely. Their land has been taken over by their neighbors.

The first whom we visited with our microphone was an old immigrant, 90 year old John Swenson, born in the area of Nässjö in 1874, There were nine children at home. After the drudgery as a farm worker in his younger years on a farm and country estate he traveled to Texas in 1896. He was spry and talked easily where he now sat on the edge of his giant-sized American bed at home in his cottage in Austin. His Småland accent became much better while he told about his long life, all the way back to his childhood in Småland. He thought that for the most that it was funny.

“I have been here for 67 years, but I haven’t become an American yet!”

American citizen, of course, but, “I am still the same Swede today as I was the day I came to Austin! He came to Texas on a boat

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from New York and stepped on the dock in Galveston, where several boys from his home parish stood and waited on him and took him to his brother and other relatives in Austin. An uncle (mother’s brother) had already come with the 1867 immigrants from Forserum. The next morning at seven o’clock, John had already begun his first job in America as a rail carrier for building a railroad. He was 23 years old, strong as a bear and “he slung the rails onto his shoulders like a feather.” But, the sun made the rails hot as fire - and he must take hold of them with gloves. After 4 months he had had enough, and he then became a cotton picker for a couple of years. However, it was seasonal work and the payment was poor.

He took himself now up to Hutto, a Swedish colony North of Austin, there he got work with a plantation owner called “Rike” (Rich) Nelson on their big “cotton gin”, a cleaner where people separated out ”wool” from the seed of the cotton. His own uncle was manager of the gin. To “gin cotton” was not as difficult a job as working on the railroad. Before work on the gin could begin the cotton must be picked, and for that many people were needed and John helped with that on different farms, among others for a brother of the big farmer “Cotton Johnson” in Hutto. It was one hot and terrible busy job, which must be done. It was said that Cotton Johnson’s wife picked 400 pounds in a day, more than the quickest Negro. John lay to and worked just as much as 3 others, he said. In two days he alone picked one whole bale. “I sweated so, it ran out of me clear, it was like it had come out of a “bathtub”! It could have been upwards of 115º F in July, the same as 43º Celsius! Also, at night he

continued picking “when there was moonlight”.

During these years “he rented”, a farm for himself, where he planted cotton, sugarcane and corn. Also, working with sugar cane was tiring. People could not sow seeds, but they must “plant roots”. At the harvest, people cut off the stalk with a machine, but they must pile them together in piles and stack them! But , at this time he could “stack a stack” so that they had a suitable slant to them. With a mill, turned by a donkey that goes around in “ a circle” people pressed juice from the sugarcane and then, later cooked “molasses” from it.

That farm he rented for a good number of years, but he would rather have his own. He had luck when he met up with a man who had a big farm that he bought for 12,000 dollars. It was money which he had borrowed

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from his mother with cheap interest. But, when he, without her consent asked to marry a “mexare-jänta” - in other words, a girl of Mexican lineage, his Mamma became so furious and demanded right then, all her money instantly! He must sell and John needed only to pay 50 dollars per acre. When he sold the farm two years later he had earned 5,000 dollars from the transaction.

It was good land there, and he got good crops of cotton. No irrigation was needed, either. He made big reclamation on virgin ground. “It was easy to plow up land with a disk (breaking) plow. But, it was was a dreadful job to take away “mesquite bushes”, an obstinate and hard rooted weed , which grew fast, had

sharp thorns and held firmly to the earth, and, had a strong branching root system. People must have leather pants on himself when he tried working with it. Best was to hire “mexicans” who had skill to chop them up. For break plowing he had four horses and four mules. Mules were good because they ate less. But, people must have horses anyway. They were stronger. And, people could not go to church behind mules with their long ears - that looked too bad.

So, eventually homesickness became too strong and in 1910 he went home to be a farmer in Forserum, his wife’s home district. But, he was amazed when he got to see them there at home go and plow with oxen exactly as in his youth. “I could not plainly come in with them there, and go and drive a pair of small oxen, with such stones. I thought of Texas; where one can drive for miles and not need to turn.” No, it did not go for them to stay in Sweden. After two year he was back on the fertile wideness in Texas again. Lucky that he did not listen to his wife when he asked about the time when they should travel back!

She wanted to go on the TITANIC, the notorious, misfortunate boat that collided with an iceberg!

In the winter of 1922 he went to Sweden again. He had “Spanish sickness” and needed a change of climate. His Doctor had recommended the fresh, cold air in Sweden. Swenson must walk himself until he was tired, the Doctormean,. “set yourself in the snow and draw in the cold air into your lungs; now and then, it will kill germs and bacteria. He “walked”, on foot, many miles, and he became well!

Our next speaker, Elof Carlson, was a late immigrant, he had come in 1910. Even he had also traveled to relatives who had arrived earlier.

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Elof had just begun his military training, when he got a ticket from his brother-in-law in Texas. Then, he needed to handle it quickly. He was home on Christmas leave and he must rejoin his Regiment again on New Year’s Day. On Christmas Day he left by himself and went away and got on board a boat for England. It was a risky trip over the North Sea, where the immigrants were pack so tight that “it was like a pig transport”. On the second boat he came from Liverpool over to New York, and on still another boat headed southward along the East coast down to Galveston in the Mexican Gulf. By train he took himself up to Round Rock. When he hopped off the train in the dark of night he heard his name called up by a Swedish voice. After some peering in the darkness he got to see that it belonged to a Negro who was sent to meet him. One such person he had never seen before. But, the Negro showed himself to be a nice person who saw to it that he got to rest on a sofa several hours. Next morning the brother-in-law came to get him in a “buggy”, a light wagon which was pulled by a mule. Carlson only stared. He hardly knew the brother-in-law, and a mule he had never seen, and when he drove on the road they were soon stuck in the awful mud which Texas fertile topsoil changes to in Fall and Winter. However, they took themselves home to his brother-in-laws over the fields - roads were not found at that time. After three weeks dealings with mules, mud and other things, Carlson had had enough. He got it in his head to return to Sweden again. But, he got stuck in the mud and the brother-in-law came after him and drove him back. His Swedish trip never came about. But, he became a cotton farmer and managed very well for himself .

Lack of real roads and the awful adventures people could be in if they kept on driving and were stuck in mud was discussed often. This came about again when we later met representative of the second and third generations of Swedes who loyally preserved tradition still back to S M Swenson’s time. Settlers in the old days were obliged to work six days a year on roads and spread out gravel with their mules, but that scheme did not last long. People made it best when they traveled together several in a company so that they could drag each other away. On the streets in Austin it was not much better. There a person settled that unpleasant duty by a Judge, when a drunk person must work on streets on certain days. Because they could not run away, sentenced men could not drag their feet with a ball on them!

At the old folks home at Trinity Lutheran Home in Round Rock, included in the building which was earlier used as the Swedish High School.

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Trinity College, we met 88 year old widow, Hulda Anderson. Her relatives belonged to the earlier immigrants from Sweden. She sat on a chair beside a bed, her voice was now weak, but she spoke clear and lucid. Her mother was 13 years old when she came here from Sweden. Her whole family at one time, mormor (mother’s mother), morfar (mother’s father) and 3 children. They had relatives here that came before. Like others they began by renting a farm until they were able to buy their own land. Hulda’s father came from Västergötland. From her own childhood memories she and her brother had to work hard on their farm when Mamma became feeble. They picked cotton and were with their Pappa when he went to the gin., she had to “bundle wheat”, tend cows and cook food. When she grew up she married a man who came from Jönköping, had a farm and 10 children. Now it is her children who picks cotton together with the hired Negros. Sometime there was a drought, hail storms and vermin, especially grasshoppers, which could ruin everything, both fields and house. In such years people must borrow because they must live and hope that the coming year’s debt could be paid off. Her father was brother-in-law of the big landowner “Rich” Nelson, who lived at “Herrgård” in Palm Valley. He was nice and helpful. Hulda contributed to her families income by milking and churning butter which she sold at a store, in town, were she shopped, and, also traded it. She curdled milk, made cheese and baked ostkaka (cheese cake).

One time a year the people in Texas were also expected to make cheese for their preacher, and make it themselves, continued Hulda. The preacher here in Brushy, always got big, fine cheeses! The congregation’s housewives met formerly in pastor’s house and had fresh milk or cheese hunks with them.

Those who did not have cheese with them gave corn, meat or some thing else to their preacher. At Christmas service the preacher should have a “Christmas offering” for his part . In Austin it is said, that usually the congregation’s chairman would go in front of the church and require the people to come forward and lay money or something on the table. The preacher stood beside it and saw what they gave!

At Christmas people made lutfisk and slaughtered. Father himself salted down the pork and made the brine. A part of the pork he “smoked” in a smokehouse which he had. He smoked with bark, mostly of oak wood, believed Hulda. They had enough pork until the month of July. They also had a “meat club”. People took turns and slaughtered a calf every week, and they divided the meat that way, so all during the year everyone got different parts of a calf. People who benefited, accurately kept note pads around here. In this manner people kept out of trouble.

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Fish the people had also. They went and fished in the “creek”. Among others, they caugh catfish and perch. Hulda spoke good Swedish, an adjusted Småländska, and she had learned Swedish as a child. She still spoke Swedish with her children when they came home, “because they are Swedish like I am”. “We had such a good Swedish school here, that is why I can speak Swedish so good.” Students came there from the Swedish high school, Bethany College in Lindsborg, Kansas, and held Swedish summer school at Union Hill in Palm Valley. I taught myself to read Swedish and to write the language. She read to me in Swedish. But, now the younger children are confirmed in English.

There at the Home were found several old people who spoke Swedish, but, Hulda was the easiest to speak. She was then the last of her generation in her family. “All the others are gone.”

Of the other Texas Swedes we recorded were several who were born out there, second and third generation people. What they told us was all essentially agreed upon, which was about the preceding information. Life on the settlers farms was lived in the manner of Swedish farmers as long as possible. It was not only speech, they commonly came from the same area in Sweden and the Lutheran church which held them together as a folk group which was clearly different from “Americans” and for those in Texas especially the numerous Germans. There was also much more that people easily could observe. Swedes homes looked different outside; people had pictures and portraits on the walls, they wove rugs “and covered the whole floor” with them, but they had no “fireplace” in the English-American manner. People changed themselves considerably. People ate herring, blood and blood bread. Swedes also made more work of cooking than Americans did. Many baked their bread of rye flour. Swedes had in addition, more often than others, a garden patch outside their houses where they grew vegetables for themselves.

Holidays each year, Christmas, Easter and Midsummer celebrations they did on their own. At Easter people ate eggs and got up extra early on Easter morning. At Midsummer people gathered for a big Sunday School festival and picnic.

Settlers troubles were considerable. The heat was oppressive for those unaccustomed, the humid climate caused malaria and other illnesses, drought, hail storms, tornadoes and grasshoppers could ruin crops of both cotton and grain. Rattlesnakes were a constant risk, especially for children. But, compared to

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Swedes living in the Northern States, Texas had considerably more to offer . Soil was good, fertile and cheap. Since people were naturally fitted for civilization and society grew, so that after several years a person could sell and make a profit. Often it was just on land business that the people made their necessities in Texas. Staying on his land a man got a good return. In general it was cotton which was the Swedes “money-crop”, the crop which made them money. People liked quicker and easier -had come to a better place than their countrymen in the North, at least, through farm work. Memories about people who must live in dirt cellars, sod houses or wretched hovels, as many so often did in the North, we did not see any of these in Texas. Distances between the Swedish settlements was not very far, and, people were also near the city of Austin. Convenient for bringing produce and get money; was surely good and, also a reason that the old Swedish self sustaining households had not likely, as a rule, been carrying them out in the North where settlers often had missed cash in hand.

An important asset for Sweden in Texas was also the cheap workers, Negro and Mexicans. The earliest Smålänningar had slaves. S. M. Swenson certainly found that slaves in Texas had it better than “torpare”(workers on small torps) in Småland, but he soon disposed of the Negroes he had and who had belonged to the plantations he bought; it became too expensive to have them all year. Memories from that time as seen around Elroy, there our authority, Arthur Olson, had a so called “slave house” still there on his 118 year old farm. It was cheaper to only pay Negroes during the seasons, when they were needed. During the meantime they lived most often in town. When it began to be time to pick cotton, farmers drove to town and moved them. Usually a person had arrangements with the Negro families. Sometimes they must first decide or figure it out, people said. They had set out what they should have for food, wages and other things. But, they were often just happy to get to come to the country and they got to live then, in a special “nigger house” - probably not overly comfortable - as the home the people who had the farm.

On big farms, like “Rich” (Rike) Nelson’s Herrgård in Palm Valley people had Negro families living there permanently - year round. It was in such case where Negro children learned to speak and even read Swedish. This made for better conditions between the Swedes and the Negros, explained our “authority” (Arthur Olson). Negros got; among other things, better food with the Swedes than with people of any other nationality. In Texas there was no segregation of the sort which was noted in the other Southern States.

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A story about a Swedish speaking Negro which people tell with pleasure among the Swedes is this: The Negro in question answered to the name of Larson and he was quick with jokes and uptakes. Among others he was sent down to the train station to meet Swedish newcomers. When Kalle Swenson from Småland stepped off the train in Round Rock ,this fellow Larsson came up to him and happily greeted him in a Småland dialect. “Welcome Kalle!” Kalle looked at him, you understand, and asked, “Are you Swedish”?

“Yes certainly, I come from Jönköping.” “But you are so black!”

“Yes, of course, but wait until you have been here as long as I have, and you will see!”

Mexicans were more dexterous workers than Negroes and people could draw up a contract, for example, so they could “half rent”. Then, a Mexican got to take half of the crop as payment for his work. It was in his interest that it be a good crop. But, Swedes or English did not learn that. Swedes finally learned

what was needed through the Spanish language.

In numerous happenings Swedes made up an insignificant part of Texas’s population, .25% in 1930, and, pressure from those around him must have been obvious. Marriage between Swedes and people of other nationalities were, however still unusual from the middle of the 1920’s. To marry yourself to an “American” girl was not good. They could not cook,that was what the man meant. Germans had the same opinion. Even economics held Swedes together to seek help for each other between themselves. Already in 1870’s the Swedish people had formed a “Horse Insurance Association” at Decker. This protocol of Swedes about insurance of horses and mules is still preserved. Both it and the Fire Insurance companies SVEA & GÖTHA were officially much for unity. Membership was limited to people of Scandinavian ancestry and their members numbered over 3,000 families in the middle of the 1960”s . The economic condition was very good. Extremely important for Swedes fellowship, in large, is the previously mentioned “Texas Swedish Pioneer Association” formed in 1912 for the “1867 immigrants”. Where this yearly midsummer service was held with singing of hymns and preaching in Swedish, still in the middle of the 1960’s. According to information people chosen by the Association frowned on the word “banbrytare” use instead of the word pioneer. People believed that the former word was Swedish and the later was borrowed from the English. People must have immigrated before 1900 to be counted as a “banbrytare” (pioneer).

No organization, never the less, have reported could measure themselves with

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the churches. A Lutheran Church was found early in every colony. Later also came the Methodists and others. Likewise home in Sweden covered ones’ whole life from baptism to burial. Churches in Lund, New Sweden, and Palm Valley still maintain a certain stamp of Swedish Parish Church of the 1800’s type with Bible scripture in Swedish on walls. In Austin the Prince of Peace Lutheran Church still has in the 1970’s been a special gathering place for city Swede’s. It was there where Julotta in Swedish is held still at the middle of the 1960’s.

In Texas, like nearly overall in Swedish-America, lay cultured life and the most of the people’s society was at the hand of churches with the preacher as self declared leader. In the previously mentioned Swedish Summer school, that lasted three months and trained students from Lindsborg, Kansas, people taught themselves to read and write Swedish and included some of Sweden’s history and geography. Many people have told about their difficulty when they tried to learn “fine Swedish”, (High Swedish). About that more is to follow. A preacher in Eriksdahl told about, when he should begin a public school and teach in English. He asked a boy how old he was. So he answered him in Småland’s dialect: “ I am seven years old and will soon be eight.” His parents were so ashamed and thought it was terrible. We youngsters could surely “talk Spanish with the Mexicans on the farm, but not English.!”

But our microphone also picked up distinct hints of a refined, sometimes elegant High Swedish of the 1800’s style with an extremely English streak. Texas Swedes had a clear culture awareness and made it a natural thing for them that they regretted even for the higher teaching of Swedes. For more than 20 years two Swedish colleges were founded, the Trinity Lutheran

College in Round Rock and the Methodist’s Texas Wesleyan College in Austin both now pass as Swedish educational institutions. Parents sacrificed sleep in many respects through the years for their children’s education. Sometimes however the newly acquired learning could take unexpected turns. People told about a boy who went to Trinity College, that he brought himself up to a church women's meeting and declared: “Yes, see Father and Mother, they are as dumb as cows, they don’t understand anything.”

Reasons that the Texas Swedes have maintained their language and their nationality which defines their numerical few was worthy of a special scrutiny. It seems possible that the forethought has been “finer’ for the Swede’s in Texas than in the Northern States. This little Swedish group has an economic and cultural respect,

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they could feed themselves and one another, in any case. Even in the Northern States the Swedes have a good reputation, both with “Americans and Germans”. Also, in the Northern States Swedes have a good reputation as clever, good workers and honorable people and they have set up respected high schools and other institutes of culture. But, there they have become few in number, have they not - so far as I can see - such a national group could hold it’s place as good and as long as the Swedes in Texas. An important roll was also played in Austin in the 1970’s still publishing the newspaper TEXAS POSTEN. During the later years it also had approval to put English in this paper, both among the ads, news and literary parts.

Afterward as land in the old Swedish colonies became taken up, it became necessary around the turn of the century to get hold of a new colonization district. Both the grown up second generation and the newly arrived Swedes needed land to cultivate and ranch land for grazing on a big scale. Likewise, as the other Swedish- Americans solved problems down there through secondary immigration from the old communities out to the new colonies in the remote part of the state. A new line of Swedish settlers stood up. On our way northward we visited one of the biggest of these secondary settlements, that which lay around the town of Stamford in North Texas, a landed territory which S. M. Swenson had acquired. In the beginning of our century this recent land for Swedes was parceled out and it was mostly people from New Sweden who lived near Austin that moved up there. A Lutheran congregation was formed and they got the name Eriksdahl (Ericdale) from one of the Swenson’s. This church was rebuilt several times; the newest is a stately building of stone. Pastor, Dr. H. B. Haterius, spoke Swedish on our visit. He had recently been to an old settler’s funeral and held his talk in Swedish at the families request. God’s word has a warm and sincere ring of childhood speech, which people can often hear as the old American/Swedish say. With Haterius as guide we made a number of recordings at Stamford. None of the speakers had visited Sweden. Swedish still was fluent with Småland's dialect most dominant.

The first Swedish Texas immigrant families still belong today as the big landowners in the State. Outside Stamford lies one of Texas’s biggest block of cattle ranchers, “the SMS Ranches”, there in 1960’s under the enterprising direction of Svante Magnus Swenson’s brother’s son. Before we left Texas we

visited one of the biggest ranches: Throckmorton Ranch. Our host, Mr. A. M. G. (“Swede”) Swenson talked Swedish and at least one of their cowboys was an immigrant from

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Småland. The Swedish tradition in Texas showed to be deeply rooted also there, even when our speech no longer sounds among cowboys out on the ranch land.