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Church organized in Swedish community
On this day in 1897, the Bethlehem congregation was organized in Lund,
Texas. Lund, in northeastern Travis County, was settled by Swedes in the
late 1880s. The community was the center of a large Swedish agricultural
settlement that arose as an extension of the New Sweden area, about four
miles west. The first settlers in Lund were N. M. Anderson, August
Thornquist, and Gustaf Seaholm. In the 1890s other Swedish families
moved into the community. In a letter dated January 23, 1896, two
settlers described the unique character of the community to their
relatives back in Sweden: "West of us there live nothing but Swedes for
a distance of about sixteen miles. East and south and north of us there
lives a mixed population of Americans, Germans, Bohemians, Negroes, and
Mexicans, so it is certainly a strange mixture." The Bethlehem
congregation in Lund was established in 1897, with nineteen communicants
and twenty children. The congregation was given 1½ acres of land by P.
V. Nelson, Nels Ankarstolpe, and J. E. Rivers, and an additional acre
was given for a community graveyard. The church was built in the fall of
1899. On April 7, 1980, a tornado severely damaged Lund. The Bethlehem
Lutheran Church of Lund was lifted from its foundation and had to be
demolished. A large brick structure with a bell tower was built to
replace the historic church.
- Links to Related Handbook of Texas Online Articles
- LUND, TX
- SWEDES
- NEW SWEDEN, TX
- TRAVIS COUNTY
- Other Texas Day by Day Articles for This Date
- A Prussian lens on South Tejas (1860)
- Prussian mapmaker retires from General Land Office (1899)
- Historian Joe B. Frantz born (1917)
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