Olivia, Texas. 1894. A wide spot in the road.

John Lind’s store and post office.  Olivia (Calhoun County) Texas, circa 1894.

In the 1918 book, Swedes in Texas, Ernest Severin writes:  “John Lind ... was not only the first, but the only store-keeper in the pioneer-days and he was a great help to the early settlers. As they were accustomed to, they complained that the goods were too expensive but Mr. Lind usually had to wait years to get paid. He and the farmers had to be patient in the early difficult years. His patience helped him and he won both respect and love. In 1906, Mr. E. Wilson and his son Hartwin, bought Mr. Lind’s store, and they have owned it since then.”
          From ”Swedes in Texas in Words and Pictures, 1838 to 1918”  (Published in Swedish in 1918; translated by Christine Andreason, 1994: and accessed on the web  here.) A later photograph of the Lind /Wilson store (with cars instead of buggies) can be seen at this site.

Olivia, which lies on the coast of Texas, was established in 1892 by Reverend Carl Haterius, a minister from Galesburg Illinois. He hoped to create a colony of Swedish American Lutherans. Among the early Swedes who purchased land and settled in Olivia were Anders and Bengta Swenson; also with them, their sons, Charley and John Robert, and their daughter Elina, her husband Paul Paulson and their children. While Elina and Paul were back in Davenport Iowa by 1895, Anders and Bengta and their sons continued to live and farm in Olivia up through the 1900 census. Other family members must have returned to Olivia several times between 1895 to 1917, because there are later, as well as early, photographs.

I’ll be using quotes from  Swedes in Texas book quite a bit to describe the people and places in the Olivia photographs.   It is part of a really nice website Swedish American Heritage Online. Check it out!

Negative # : Paulson375