Samuel Johan Forsgard

Forsgard reached Texas when Swedes here were still few. The Handbook of Texas says Swedish immigration began in 1848 with twenty-five people brought by Swante Swenson. The 1880 census counted 364 Swedes in the state and the 1900 census 4,344, and Texas held more than any other southern state. Immigration had nearly stopped by 1910. By the 1940s, the Handbook lists Waco among the places with concentrations of Swedes and their descendants. The plaque lists the bakery, restaurant, patents and sporting goods business that Forsgard built from a city he reached in 1857.

What the plaque says

Samuel Johan Forsgard Samuel Johan Forsgard Born in Klockergarden, Forserum, Sweden, Samuel Johan Forsgard (1828-1912) came to Texas in 1855 during the first wave of Swedish immigration to Texas. In 1857, he married Mary C. Johnson (1827-1897) in Austin and they moved to Waco to make a home. Forsgard established a bakery, restaurant and confectionary business before joining Gurley's Regiment of the Confederate Army in 1861. After the war, he resumed some of his businesses, but also found time to invent and patent farming equipment and to establish Ambold's Sporting Goods Company. A well-known resident of Waco for more than 50 years, Forsgard played a significant role in the city's 19th-century development. (2001)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Texas Ranger Hall of Fame and Museum — steps away
  The official state repository of Texas Ranger memorabilia, opened in 1968 in Fort Fisher Park on the Brazos, named for a Ranger post of 1837 whose site no one has located.
• Dr Pepper Museum — 0.6 mi
  The 1906 bottling plant of the Artesian Manufacturing and Bottling Company, built where Dr Pepper outgrew a Waco drugstore soda fountain, now the Dr Pepper Museum.
• Waco Suspension Bridge — 0.7 mi
  A Brazos crossing opened in January 1870 as the longest single-span suspension bridge west of the Mississippi, tolled until 1889, closed to vehicles in 1971 and now walked.
• Armstrong Browning Library — 0.7 mi
  A three-story Italian Renaissance library on the Baylor campus built to hold A. J. Armstrong's Browning collection, dedicated in December 1951 and now, by its own account, the world's largest of Browning material.

More markers nearby

• William McKendree Lambdin — steps away
• Thomas Hudson Barron — steps away
• Waco, County Seat of McLennan County — steps away
• Hebrew Rest — steps away