Women and girls, Olivia Texas, circa 1910

Women and girls pose on a wagon, Olivia area, Calhoun County Texas, circa 1907, 1910

In the early 1900s Olivia community, a number of young women left the community to find paid work.  Both in Texas and elsewhere, employment appears to be a common thread for young women of this time and class, young women who either came to America as babies with their Swedish immigrant parents, or who were the first generation Americans in these Swedish American families.

In the Davenport Iowa community along Belle Avenue, young women continued to live with their family but headed off to work in local businesses and factories, sometimes side by side with their brothers.  The girls of Olivia with fewer “locally available jobs” set off to larger cities like Austin where they found “live in” jobs as “domestics” and servants. In the Eden Church record we find the notation “gone to Austin”;  in the 1910 census record of that city we find them listed with families as “servant”;  in the city directory – the annotation of “dom” (domestic) beside their names. Both the women themselves, and their later families saw this experience as an education in “learning to appreciate the finer things in life”, “an education in etiquette.”

Many returned to their communities and families and married and settled back into farm life. A few married outside of their community and traveled on to other places. Others, like Susanna Haterius and Ellen Swenson, chose to continue with their career (nursing, teaching), which, at that time, meant that they also chose to remain single.

This picture appears to have been taken the same day as the one published earlier in the post: "They want to stay here".  Many of the same people are present in both.  Publishing a blog while doing the research is a process of “re-education”.  I feel like I’m spiraling around the identification of people, edging closer and closer – but aren’t quite positive on several of them. Firmly identified in this picture are Hulda Damstrom: standing far left, with Jennie Johnson standing next to her; and the three ladies sitting in the middle, Amy Paulson, Emma Haterius Skogberg and Emma Wilson Swenson. I'm rethinking the identity of the young girls who I originally identified as Hulda's sisters. I think they may be Emma Wilson's young sisters instead.