Cotton, the Boll Weevil and Olivia, Texas, circa 1905.

Amy Paulson leans jauntily against a bale of cotton. Olivia Colony, Texas, circa 1905.

In this picture, Amy Justine Paulson (1881-1918) poses with 5 bales of cotton. Amy's parents had moved back to Iowa by 1895, but evidently she continued to visit friends and family in Olivia, as there are many pictures dating to later years. It was this picture in my digitizing project, that made me sure that I was looking at pictures from Olivia Texas (rather than Iowa or Minnesota.) I had been reading up on the Swedish American experience in Olivia Colony in my favorite book: Swedes in Texas, so I knew that they had been farming cotton.

“These Swedes came from the northern states. The climate was unusual for them and growing cotton was an experiment they did not like very much in the beginning. Many had never worked on a farm and the farm-work, especially picking cotton, was a tiresome chore, particularly to the older people. But here as elsewhere they learned to like everything about cotton, ... One of the biggest difficulties the farmers had, was the eradication of the Boll Weavel.  ...

“The first cotton-gin was built in 1894 at a cost of $800.00 and it was called the “Farmers’Gin.” Before it was built they had to transport the cotton for thirty miles to have it ginned, all together sixty miles, there and back behind oxen. A bale of cotton sold for only $20.00 and at the most $25.00. Oh, what patience! The people of Olivia now have their own modern gin which was built at a cost of $10,000. Cotton is now shipped, either by boat ,from the gin to Port Lavaca or Galveston.” Swedes in Texas,  pg 1146-47.

Olivia and its farmers played a small but important role in the eradication of the boll weevil in Texas. J.D. Mitchell, the former owner of the Olivia Colony property, was a “bug man”. Ever since childhood he had been absolutely fascinated with entomology. Though he’d sold up his property and moved to Victoria, Texas, he remained interested and involved with his former home. As reported in a 1907 circular of the USDA Bureau of Entomology, in 1906 he arranged with the Olivia farmers to try an eradication technique that involved burning the cotton plants in October (after the cotton had been picked.) The technique was extremely successful. The following August, the cotton crop was showing little sign of the weevil and much greater production than fields 30 miles away where the farmers had not used this technique.

Identifiers:

Mitchell, Joseph Daniel
Paulson, Amy Justine (December 10, 1881 - October 18, 1918)
Olivia Colony (Calhoun County) Texas
Negative #: paulson066

Sources for this post:

”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.)

Walter, David Hunter. ‘The most important step in the control of the boll weevil”. United States Department of Agriculture, Bureau of Entomology. Circular 95, issued October 3, 1907.

Victoria Preservation, Inc. "J.D. Mitchell House" Website accessed on September 25, 2012.  (A website that includes far more history than just about the house.