The bad weather did not stop with the coming of the Swedes, Calhoun County, Texas 1895

Cold weather in Olivia Colony, February 1895.

In the two decades before the Swedes came, Calhoun County had been losing population. In 1890, only 815 people were recorded in the census.  A  series of natural disasters had hit the county in the preceding 2 decades.   Indianola, originally its largest town, was hit first by one or more epidemics, then by an 1875 hurricane and then in 1886 washed away by a tidal wave followed by a fire. The county seat moved to Port Lavaca, but population and businesses continued to decrease.

The ill weather did not stop with the coming of the new Swedish American settlers. Major freezes occurred in February 1895 (when this picture was likely taken) and in February 1899.  There must have been bad weather associated with the hurricane of 1895 (which caused winds as high as 75 miles per hour in Corpus Christie to the south and storm surge of 3-4 feet in Galveston and the famous level 4 hurricane of 1900 when hundreds died on Galveston, about 85 nautical miles away.

The more local June 26^th 1902 hurricane  (level 1) which made landfall at Port Lavaca with its winds of 80 miles per hour is likely  the event that Ruth Paulson Henrikson referred to in an interview when she stated that Anders and Bengta Swenson's "cattle were just washed away out to sea.”  Soon after this time, the elderly Anders and Bengta Swenson gave up farming on the stormy coast of Texas and headed up to Davenport Iowa, far from hurricane country.  Other settlers, both immigrant and American born, continued to move into the area and a few of the original Swedes stayed.

The information in this post was (mostly) found in:

• Travis, Richard / History of freezes in the Lower Rio Grande Valley, part II, 1895-1962 published on The Palm Society of South Texas Website. 
• Texas State Historical Association. Texas Almanac. "Significant Weather, 1700s and 1800s"
• Historical Records Survey. Texas. "Inventory of the county archives of Texas : Calhoun County, no. 29, Book, January 1941" accessed through "The Portal to Texas History".
• and, my favorite,
• “Texas Hurricane History” accessed at http://www.hpc.ncep.noaa.gov/research/txhur.pdf

Identifier: negative 059.