Manda

J. V. (Victor) Morell came first, in 1885, followed by John Sanders, Aaron Johnson and Otto Bengston. Morell built a steam cotton gin in 1886 and moved his blacksmith shop here from New Sweden. In 1893 Bengston built a large store with a residence in the rear, and the post office occupied its front. Telephone lines reached Manda in 1899, and it became a switch on the Texas and New Orleans Railroad. The Methodist church's forty-two-inch bell, given by the Walter Tips Hardware Company of Austin, now stands at the First Methodist Church in Elgin.

What the plaque says

Manda Founded by Swedish immigrants in the 1880s, this community was named for Amanda Bengtson Gustafson, sister of the town's postmaster. By the 1890s Manda boasted homes, farms, a cotton gin, general store, and blacksmith shop. The Manda Swedish Methodist Congregation, organized in 1892, built a sanctuary in 1909 and was active until 1962. A Lutheran chapel was built in 1896. The Methodist cemetery serves as a reminder of the early settlement. In 1947 area schools combined to form the Manda School District. The school building now serves as a community center. (1990)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• LBJ Presidential Library — 18 mi
  A ten-story travertine archive on the University of Texas campus holding 45 million pages from a presidency of civil rights laws, the War on Poverty and Vietnam.
• George Washington Carver Museum — 18 mi
  East Austin's museum of Black history and culture, grown from a segregated branch library moved across town in 1933, with a permanent exhibit on Juneteenth at its core.
• Texas State Cemetery — 18 mi
  A hill east of the Capitol that began with one general's grave in 1851 and now holds Stephen F. Austin, governors, Barbara Jordan and more than 2,000 Confederate veterans and widows.
• Harry Ransom Center — 18 mi
  The University of Texas archive where a Gutenberg Bible and the earliest surviving camera photograph are always on view, free, beside the papers of Watergate and the movies.

More markers nearby

• Kimbro — 1.0 mi
• New Sweden Evangelical Lutheran Church — 1.1 mi
• Carlson — 2.0 mi
• St. John Church — 4.2 mi