New Sweden Evangelical Lutheran Church

New Sweden lies on Farm Road 973 five miles northeast of Manor. It was established in 1873 as Knight's Ranch and took its new name from the Lutheran church founded in 1876. A cotton gin began operating in 1882 and a post office opened in 1887. It had two stores and forty-two residents by the mid-1890s and 104 by 1900. The post office closed in 1902, and mail went to Manor. Its school joined the Manda district in the early 1940s, and its population stood at sixty from the early 1960s through 1990.

What the plaque says

New Sweden Evangelical Lutheran Church Organized on February 23, 1876, by the Rev. J.O. Cavallin and Swedish immigrants, the New Sweden Lutheran Congregation built its first sanctuary in 1879 two miles west of this site (where the New Sweden Lutheran Cemetery is located). The present church structure, which has become an important Travis County landmark, was built in 1922 on land donated by Johanna Petterson. Services were conducted in the Swedish language until 1923. The church continues to celebrate its rich heritage as it serves the community with an ongoing ministry. (1988)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• LBJ Presidential Library — 17 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 — 17 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 — 17 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 — 17 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

• Manda — 1.1 mi
• Kimbro — 1.5 mi
• Carlson — 2.5 mi
• St. John Church — 3.1 mi