Lund is a small

unincorporated community An unincorporated area is a region that is not governed by a local municipal corporation. Widespread unincorporated communities and areas are a distinguishing feature of the United States and Canada. Most other countries of the world either have ...

in northeast

Travis County Travis County is located in south central Texas. As of the 2020 census, the population was 1,290,188. It is the fifth-most populous county in Texas. Its county seat is Austin, the capital of Texas. The county was established in 1840 and is n ...

Texas Texas (, ; Spanish: ''Texas'', ''Tejas'') is a state in the South Central region of the United States. At 268,596 square miles (695,662 km2), and with more than 29.1 million residents in 2020, it is the second-largest U.S. state by ...

, United States. It is located within the Greater Austin metropolitan area.

History

Late in the 1880s, Swedes began to settle in Lund. It was initially called Pleasant Hill. A post office with the name of either a local family or the town in Sweden was established there in 1899. The community served as the hub of a sizable Swedish agricultural hamlet that grew as an outpost of the

New Sweden New Sweden ( sv, Nya Sverige) was a Swedish colony along the lower reaches of the Delaware River in what is now the United States from 1638 to 1655, established during the Thirty Years' War when Sweden was a great military power. New Sweden f ...

region four miles to the west. N. M. Anderson, August Thornquist, and Gustaf Seaholm were Lund's first settlers. Other Swedish families settled in the area in the 1890s. The pastor of the New Sweden Lutheran Church was Dr. J. A. Stamline. On January 16, 1897, the Bethlehem congregation in Lund was founded with 19 communicants and 20 children. P. V. Nelson, Nels Ankarstolpe, and J. E. Rivers donated of land to the congregation, and another acre was set aside for a communal cemetery. Building on the church began in the autumn of 1899. In 1989, the Bethlehem Lutheran Church was still in operation. Lund had a general store, two cotton gins, and a

blacksmith A blacksmith is a metalsmith who creates objects primarily from wrought iron or steel, but sometimes from other metals, by forging the metal, using tools to hammer, bend, and cut (cf. tinsmith). Blacksmiths produce objects such as gates, gr ...

shop in the 1890s. From their residence in Lund, two brothers named Carl and Fred Bergman wrote letters to their sisters who lived in Sweden. They wrote, "West of us there live nothing but Swedes for a distance of about sixteen miles," in a letter dated January 23, 1896. "A peculiar variety of people dwell east, south, and north of us, including Americans,

Germans , native_name_lang = de , region1 = , pop1 = 72,650,269 , region2 = , pop2 = 534,000 , region3 = , pop3 = 157,000 3,322,405 , region4 = , pop4 = ...

, Bohemians, Negroes, and Mexicans." Large crops were generated by the fertile countryside, and the new immigrants in Lund started to identify more with Americans than with Swedes. 27 Lund natives fought in

World War I World War I (28 July 1914 11 November 1918), often abbreviated as WWI, was one of the deadliest global conflicts in history. Belligerents included much of Europe, the Russian Empire, the United States, and the Ottoman Empire, with fightin ...

, while several others did the same in

World War II World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposing ...

. Lund was seriously destroyed by a storm on April 7, 1980. The Lund Bethlehem Lutheran Church had to be destroyed after being upended from its foundation. To replace the original church, a sizable brick building with a bell tower was constructed.

Geography

Lund is located in northeastern Travis County.

Education

The year 1891 saw the establishment of a Swedish Lutheran Sunday school by Dr. J. A. Stamline. The first school in Lund was established in the fall of 1894, and the initial academic year was three months long. The schoolhouse had windows on two sides and was by in size. The school at Lund was closed in 1947 due to a decline in the population of the rural area, and the

Manda Manda may refer to: Places * Kafr Manda, Arab town in the Lower Galilee * Manda Upazila, an upazila in the Division of Rajshahi, Bangladesh * Manda, Kale, a village in Burma * Manda, Guinea, a town in the Labé Region * Manda, Jammu, India, ...

school district subsequently incorporated it along with the schools in Carlson,

, and Kimbro. They all came together to form the Elgin Independent School District in 1963. Schools that are zoned for the community are Neidig Elementary School, Elgin Middle School, and Elgin High School.

References

{{authority control Unincorporated communities in Texas Unincorporated communities in Travis County, Texas