Swedes in Michigan

In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, large numbers of Swedish immigrants came to Michigan seeking new opportunities in the United States and relief from economic, religious, or political problems at home. In addition to establishing early farming communities, Swedish immigrants worked on railroad construction, mining, fishing, logging, and urban manufacturing. As a result, Swedish Americans made significant contributions to the economic and cultural landscape of Michigan, a history this book explores in engaging and illustrative depth. Swedes in Michigan traces the evolution of hard-working people who valued education and assimilated actively while simultaneously maintaining their cultural ties and institutions. Moving from past to present, the book examines community patterns, family connections, social organizations, exchange programs, ethnic celebrations, and business and technical achievements that have helped Swedes in Michigan maintain a sense of their heritage even as they have adapted to American life.

1105113782
Swedes in Michigan

In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, large numbers of Swedish immigrants came to Michigan seeking new opportunities in the United States and relief from economic, religious, or political problems at home. In addition to establishing early farming communities, Swedish immigrants worked on railroad construction, mining, fishing, logging, and urban manufacturing. As a result, Swedish Americans made significant contributions to the economic and cultural landscape of Michigan, a history this book explores in engaging and illustrative depth. Swedes in Michigan traces the evolution of hard-working people who valued education and assimilated actively while simultaneously maintaining their cultural ties and institutions. Moving from past to present, the book examines community patterns, family connections, social organizations, exchange programs, ethnic celebrations, and business and technical achievements that have helped Swedes in Michigan maintain a sense of their heritage even as they have adapted to American life.

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Swedes in Michigan

Swedes in Michigan

by Rebecca J. Mead
Swedes in Michigan

Swedes in Michigan

by Rebecca J. Mead

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Overview

In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, large numbers of Swedish immigrants came to Michigan seeking new opportunities in the United States and relief from economic, religious, or political problems at home. In addition to establishing early farming communities, Swedish immigrants worked on railroad construction, mining, fishing, logging, and urban manufacturing. As a result, Swedish Americans made significant contributions to the economic and cultural landscape of Michigan, a history this book explores in engaging and illustrative depth. Swedes in Michigan traces the evolution of hard-working people who valued education and assimilated actively while simultaneously maintaining their cultural ties and institutions. Moving from past to present, the book examines community patterns, family connections, social organizations, exchange programs, ethnic celebrations, and business and technical achievements that have helped Swedes in Michigan maintain a sense of their heritage even as they have adapted to American life.


Product Details

ISBN-13: 9781611860412
Publisher: Michigan State University Press
Publication date: 05/01/2012
Series: Discovering the Peoples of Michigan Series
Pages: 100
Product dimensions: 6.50(w) x 9.30(h) x 0.50(d)

About the Author

Rebecca J. Mead is an Associate Professor in the History Department at Northern Michigan University, where she teaches U.S. history, women’s history, public history, labor history, and Native American history.

Read an Excerpt

Swedes in Michigan


By Rebecca J. Mead

Michigan State University Press

Copyright © 2012 Rebecca J. Mead
All right reserved.

ISBN: 978-1-61186-041-2


Chapter One

Early Migration and Settlement in Lower Michigan

Very few Swedes came to Michigan before the Civil War. According to the U.S. Census, there were only sixteen in 1850 and fewer than three hundred by 1860. Many of the earliest Swedish immigrants sought better farming land further west, or they settled in cities such as Chicago and Minneapolis where there were already established ethnic communities. There were very few Swedes in Detroit until the early twentieth century, however. When Swedes began to arrive in Michigan in greater numbers after 1860, they gravitated to the western part of the state near Lake Michigan. Along the coast, there were concentrations of Swedes in the counties of Manistee, Mason, Oceana, Muskegon, Ottawa, and Berrien. A bit inland, significant numbers of Swedes settled in Wexford, Mecosta, Osceola, Newaygo, and Kent counties. In these areas, some farming was possible, but the growth industries were lumbering and railroad construction. In the forests along the coast, cut timber was floated down the rivers and lakes to sawmills and processing centers in Manistee, Muskegon, and especially Grand Rapids. Similar circumstances also attracted settlers to the Saginaw region in eastern Michigan, particularly around Bay City. These early residents were usually small clusters of several families who migrated then settled together or groups of young men working in the lumber industry.

In 1860, eight counties had ten or more Swedish-born residents: Kent (with sixty Swedes living in Sparta and Kent), Muskegon (forty-one in Muskegon, Oceana, and Dalton), St. Clair (thirty-four in China), Mason (sixteen in Little Sauble), Wayne (sixteen in Detroit), Washtenaw (fifteen in Salem), Manistee (fourteen in Manistee), Manitou (eleven on North Manitou Island), and Macomb (ten in Chesterfield). By 1870, many of these towns had grown considerably and new ones had been established: near Lake Michigan, 117 Swedish-born residents lived in Sparta, 106 in Whitehall, ninety-one in Muskegon, eighty-nine in Manistee, and forty in Grand Rapids. Other new settlements included the towns of Newberg (Cass County), with twenty-nine Swedish-born inhabitants, Pere Marquette (Mason County), with seventy, and Laketon (Muskegon County), with twenty-five Swedish residents.

Most of the new immigrants lacked the capital to purchase land initially, so men often worked for wages part of the year as they saved their money. Some bought land and then spent their weekends and summers—sometimes for years—improving their properties. Swedish agrarians were largely self-sufficient: the men were skilled carpenters and smiths, making and repairing most of their own implements, while the women were traditionally responsible for dairying and the care of cattle, as well as textile production. Swedish American women frequently contributed to the family economy by providing surplus products like eggs, milk, or butter to local consumers. In both Sweden and America, young women frequently went out to work, either in the fields along with men or as domestic servants in private homes or local boarding houses. Displaced by the agrarian crisis Sweden experienced in the middle of the nineteenth century, these young people were eager to emigrate in search of better jobs and potential marriage partners.

The first major concentration of Swedish Americans was located in Kent County, where a small group settled in 1853. Many of them were from Småland, in southern Sweden. After a difficult journey, they landed in Boston, lived in Plymouth, Michigan (Wayne County) for three years, then moved on to establish the Kent County communities of Alpine, Kent City (formerly Lisbon), and Sparta, where later they were joined by additional groups of Swedish immigrants. Many of these people were very poor and they were probably attracted to the area by the knowledge that fellow Swedes were already settled there. Sometimes the men came first, leaving their families behind in Sweden or Chicago as they cleared land for small farms. In 1860, there were nine or ten families in Kent County; by 1870, there were almost two hundred Swedes living in the county; by 1880, Kent County had more than five hundred Swedish inhabitants.

At first the nearest facilities were in Grand Rapids, about twenty miles away from Kent City, but soon the town got its own sawmill and grist mill. In 1859, a visiting minister reported that the Swedes of Kent City had built a school, and in 1866, the first Swedish Evangelical Lutheran church in Michigan, the Swedish Evangelical Lutheran Mamrelund Congregation, was organized. In the summer of 1872 they built a church. One of these founders, John Johnson, had no musical training, but he built an organ for the church and played it for the next thirty-five years. The son of one of the early pioneers in Kent County, Charles Theodore Gan (or Grawn), was president of Central Michigan Normal School (now Central Michigan University) from 1900–1918, and one of his grandsons, William Grawn Milliken, became the governor of Michigan in 1969. Charles Herbert Blomstrom, who later established the C. H. Blomstrom Motor Company in Detroit, was also born in Kent City.

Another important site of early Swedish settlement was Osceola County, particularly the town of Tustin (originally New Bleking). The Swedish Toger Johnson at his farm, Newberry, Michigan, ca. 1890. Courtesy Superior View. population of four in 1870 increased rapidly to 398 in 1880, and by 1890 the population peaked at 643 before beginning to decline. Initially, immigration to the area had been slow (perhaps because it gained a reputation as a country of marshes and dry unproductive areas), but the railroad companies needed labor, and Scandinavians were favored because they were considered to be sober and hard workers. Combining assets to form the Continental Improvement Company, four regional lines advertised in the Swedish press, and they also hired the Reverend Josiah P. Tustin of St. Mark's Episcopal Church in Grand Rapids to return to Sweden and recruit settlers. Rev. Tustin was engaged in an effort to improve relations between the (Lutheran) Church of Sweden and the U.S. Episcopal Church, and while he did not accomplish this goal, he did succeed in his recruitment efforts. Tustin made several trips and attracted more than one thousand Swedes to Grand Rapids (Kent County), Osceola County, Newaygo County, Mecosta County, and Wexford County. After helping the immigrants get settled, Tustin moved on to Wisconsin; the town of New Bleking was renamed in his honor in 1872.

Although emigrants had to pay their own way across the ocean, the railroad consortium offered free transportation to Michigan from New York, housing assistance, good wages ($1.75 to $2.00 per day), and the newcomers were not required to promise to stay. The biggest attraction was the opportunity to buy land. The railroads owned more than a million acres which could be purchased for $5 per acre (on credit), and government land was also available at $2.50 per acre. The focal point of settlement was the town of New Bleking, built on forty acres of land donated by the Grand Rapids and Indiana Railroad. The first church in Tustin was organized in 1872. It was an Episcopalian church, undoubtedly due to Rev. Tustin's influence, but since most of the settlers were orthodox Lutherans, they soon decided to form their own congregation, the Swedish Evangelical Church, in April 1874. By the late 1870s, Tustin was an established community, with a hotel, a newspaper (the Tustin Herald), and a permanent Lutheran pastor, John Forsberg—who was also a local machinist, blacksmith, and missionary.

Forsberg's combination of talents was not unusual for a rural Swedish minister in America. Forsberg came to the United States in 1866, spent several years working his trade and traveling on missionary work, then decided to acquire formal seminary training in 1877. While in Tustin he organized churches at Reed City, Cadillac, Hobart, Morley, and Bound's Mill. One of Forsberg's neighbors, Andrew Dahlstrom, was a former cabinetmaker from Chicago who bought land and became a farmer and the pastor of the Swedish Free Church. In the United States, rural isolation, small congregations, and the lack of trained ministers meant men of faith like Forsberg and Dahlstrom often served their communities in multiple capacities. They were sometimes subjected to harassment and derision because of their unofficial status, however, which was probably a factor in Forsberg's decision to seek seminary training and ordination.

One of Sparta's early residents, Godfrey J. Anderson (born in 1895), moved in and out of the area with his family several times, undoubtedly seeking better economic conditions. After serving in the U.S. Army, Anderson returned to work in the Grand Rapids furniture industry until his retirement. In later life he described the importance of the Swedish Evangelical [Mission] Church in providing community cohesion and some relief to the monotony of farm life, especially at Christmas. Even then, "for the most part there was something dull, lonely and forlorn about Christmas Day in the country," but everyone bustled about preparing lots of good food for both the annual Sunday school Yulefest, followed by the Julotta service at church. The holiday season offered a chance to visit with neighbors, drink lots of coffee, and eat delicious dishes such as lutefisk, Christmas korv (sausage), calva dans (a custard-like dish made from new raw milk), and all kinds of pastries and baked goods. The Sunday school gathering, which was held at one of the local farms, could be somewhat tedious for young people since it involved scripture readings and speeches by the pastor and others, and it could also be a bit intimidating for those called upon to give recitations. To brighten things up there was music and hymn singing, the lighting of the tree, presents, and more food and coffee before everyone packed back into their wagons and sleighs and headed home.

The Julotta service was even more important, as everyone got up in the wee hours of the morning, and "set out for church carrying a torch or lantern and singing carols along the way." Anderson recalled, "The whole countryside was alive with bobbing, flickering lights, and the sounds of sleighbells, merry greetings and singing were wafting from afar on the frosty morning air." The sanctuary was full of lighted candles, greenery, and the singing of traditional hymns. Christmas Day was a relatively quiet family day, but the second day of Christmas, St. Stephen's Day, was devoted to more carol singing and neighborhood visiting, and so it continued throughout the Christmas season. Anderson reports that "King Canute, who ruled Sweden a thousand years ago, wisely decreed that the season should end on Saint Hillary's Day, the 20th of Jan; otherwise the Swedes, in their exuberance, most likely would have celebrated Christmas all winter." These celebrations were extremely important to Swedish people in America, allowing them to maintain contact with their original homeland and to perpetuate old traditions in their new home.

As railroad construction and logging expanded throughout Michigan in the 1870s, Swedish settlements also grew. Due to the efforts of Rev. Forsberg and others, Swedish Lutheran churches were established in the nearby communities of Hobart, Gilbert, Jennings, and LeRoy. Some of these towns were too small to support an exclusively Swedish church, however, so Scandinavian Lutherans often organized together initially or combined later. In Big Rapids (Mecosta County), Immanuel Lutheran Church was established when local Swedish and Danish congregations merged; the northeast side of town where the church was located was called "Swede Hill." Cadillac, in Wexford County, had four Swedish churches and a Swedish newspaper. The original Zion Lutheran Church was established in 1874 and led by Rev. Forsberg from 1877 to 1883. Other Swedish churches in Cadillac included the Swedish Christian Mission Church (established in 1880), the Free Methodist Church (1881), and the Swedish Baptist Church (1883). The community also supported the Gotha Society, a mutual aid and fraternal group, which constructed a building now used by the American Legion.

In Manistee (Manistee County), due west of Cadillac on the Lake Michigan coast, Our Savior's Historical Museum Church is the former Our Savior's Evangelical Lutheran Church. Built in 1870, and now listed on the National Historic Register, it was officially a Danish church, but Swedes helped build it and attended services there until they formed their own church, the Swedish Messiah Lutheran Church. One of the prominent local Swedish inhabitants of Manistee was Lewis Larsson (more commonly known as Louis Sands). He started as a lumberjack, bought forest land, and built his own sawmill in the 1870s. Sands diversified his activities—earning himself the name the "Salt King" for the salt works he established in 1886—and became a millionaire, the leading employer in Manistee, and a major civic donor.

Some of these communities, such as White Cloud (Newaygo County), Big Rapids (Mecosta County), and Bailey (Muskegon County) were heavily settled by Swedish Finns. These folks also immigrated into eastern Michigan around the Bay City, Oscoda, and East Tawas areas to work in the forests and sawmills. Those who settled in western Michigan around Ludington and Muskegon were attracted to fishing as well as lumbering, and they often stayed after the timber was cut and the mills closed. In Ludington, Swedish immigrants established Emanuel Swedish Lutheran Church in 1874, which grew to be one of the largest Swedish churches in lower Michigan, and also a Free Mission church and a Baptist church. People in the smaller communities adapted as best they could when the lumber was depleted in the Lower Peninsula and the timber industry moved north into the Upper Peninsula. In the twentieth century many moved to Flint and to Detroit to work in the automobile industry. In White Cloud, Matt and Hilma Gust operated "Swede's Saloon" until Prohibition, and then they went into the hotel business. The Swedish Mission Church in White Cloud was organized in 1908 but closed in 1966 as older members passed away and their children lost interest or left town seeking better economic opportunities.

South of Grand Rapids, the first Swedish settlers in Allegan County arrived at Abronia (just south of Allegan) in 1867, where they were subsequently joined by other groups in the 1870s. When Swedish Lutherans decided to organize a church in 1878, they asked the Lisbon (now Kent City) minister to help them, establishing the Swedish Lutheran Sandhem Church of Abronia (later Immanuel Lutheran Church). In St. Joseph (Berrien County), there were only two Swedish inhabitants in 1860 (but 112 by 1870), located primarily in the towns of Benton, Lincoln, Niles, and especially St. Joseph, which had a Swedish-born population of forty-seven that year. Because the Scandinavian population was not large, Swedish, Danish, and Norwegian Lutherans joined together to establish the Saron Lutheran Church in 1875. Initially the small congregation was served by visiting pastors and it met in the fire hall. In 1882, the congregation purchased and remodeled a building that previously had housed a rescue mission and a roller skating rink. Soon thereafter they acquired a full-time pastor. Because services were in Swedish, the church did not expand until a new minister arrived in 1918 and shifted to English. As a result, the church began to attract new members, outgrew its original home, and built a new structure in 1927. It remains an important community institution, as do many of the Swedish churches, despite the dilution of their original ethnic identities.

(Continues...)



Excerpted from Swedes in Michigan by Rebecca J. Mead Copyright © 2012 by Rebecca J. Mead. Excerpted by permission of Michigan State University Press. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.

Table of Contents

Contents

Introduction....................1
Early Migration and Settlement in Lower Michigan....................23
Swedes in the Upper Peninsula....................35
Urban Swedes and Modern Times....................65
The Swedish American Churches in America....................6
Finnish Swedes and Swedish Finns: Early Internationalists....................16
Johan Banér: A North Country Original....................55
Appendix 1 The Significance of Ethnic Swedish Food....................81
Appendix 2 The St Lucia Day Tradition....................87
Appendix 3 Swedish Ethnic Associations....................93
Notes....................95
For Further Reference....................105
Index....................109
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