Gustav August Forsgard

Forsgard's first Houston employer and the bank he later helped direct were the work of one merchant. Benjamin A. Shepherd, a Virginian who reached Galveston in 1839, helped organize Crawford and Shepherd and came to run its Houston branch; it became Shepherd and Burke when Andrew Jackson Burke bought in in 1844. Shepherd sold out to Burke in 1854 and opened his own exchange office. In 1867 he merged that private bank into the new First National Bank of Houston, housed at first in his building at Main and Congress, and he led it until his death in 1891.

What the plaque says

Gustav August Forsgard Gustav (Gustaf, Gustave) August Samuelson (1832-1919) was one of 13 children born to Johannes Samuelson and Anna Petersdotter of Forserum, Sweden. At the age of 16, he emigrated from Sweden, arriving in Houston with a group of other Scandinavians on November 22, 1848. Two prominent Swedish Texans, Swante Mangus Swenson and Sir Swante Palm, met the group, which wintered at the Swenson farm in Fort Bend County. There, the men in the group worked the fields tending cotton and corn. Samuelson changed his last name to Forsgard for his native Forserum and the Swedish word Gard, meaning "home." Four of his brothers, Samuel Johan, Carl Oscar, Johannes Wilhelm and Claes Henning, followed Forsgard to the U.S. and adopted the same new name; all but Claes settled in Texas. After a year of farm work, Forsgard returned to Houston and worked as a mercantile clerk for Shepherd and Burke. He also became part of Swenson's and Palm's informal Swedish immigration agency. Forsgard acted as a liaison between new immigrants and Swedes already living in Texas. During the next several years, Forsgard attended school and pursued various business interests. During the Civil War, Forsgard served with Texas forces. His responsibilities included building fortifications near Galveston to defend against a possible Federal invasion. Forsgard wed Jennie Mary Lusk in 1866, and the couple had two children who survived to adulthood. Over the years, Forsgard was civically active and was a trustee of First Presbyterian Church, director of First National Bank and Master of Holland Masonic Lodge No. 1 of Houston. (2005)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Sam Houston Park and the Heritage Society — 1.0 mi
  Ten historic buildings gathered in a downtown park below the skyscrapers, among them the 1870 house of the Reverend Jack Yates, built five years after emancipation.
• Rothko Chapel — 2.0 mi
  An octagonal chapel open to all faiths, built by the de Menils around fourteen dark canvases by Mark Rothko, with Barnett Newman's Broken Obelisk standing in the pool outside.
• The Menil Collection — 2.0 mi
  John and Dominique de Menil's free museum in Montrose: a grey-sided Renzo Piano building among bungalows, holding antiquities, Surrealism and art of Oceania under natural light.
• Buffalo Soldiers National Museum — 2.1 mi
  A museum in Houston's 1925 Light Guard Armory that tells the service of Black soldiers from the Revolutionary War onward, built from one veteran's thirty years of collecting.

More markers nearby

• Edwin Fairfax Gray — steps away
• Irvin Capers Lord — steps away
• Ellis Benson — steps away
• Colonel Benjamin Franklin Terry — steps away