The Southwestern Historical Quarterly, Volume 32, July 1928 - April, 1929 Page: 69

Danevang, Texas

About 35,000 steers were grazing there, all sleek and fat. The
members of the committee concluded that this would be suitable
land for Danish farmers. Accordingly an option was obtained
from the Texas Land and Cattle Company on 25,000 acres to be
sold to Danes only during the next three years. Before the close
of the year 1895, ninety-three Danes had purchased 9,000 acres.
Not all of the 25,000 was sold to Danes, but practically none but
Danes have settled in the Danevang settlement.
Already in 1894 settlers began to move in. Among the first
were P. P. Larsen, Christian Rasmussen, C. Madsen, Niels
Hansen, N. C. Krag, N. Thomsen, L. J. Lykke, Mads Andersen,
J. P. Olson, C. A. Nygaard, John Treumer, Soren Christensen,
Iver Vind, Peter Ravn, Hans Nygaard, Theodor Andersen, H. P.
Hermansen, H. J. Rasmussen, Helvig Berndt, Kresten Pedersen,
Peter Pedersen, and Jorgen Jorgensen. Some were bachelors but
most were married. Originally most of these people had come
from Slesvig,5 the southern part of Jutland, and the Danish islands
Funen (Fyn) and Seeland (Sjaelland), but nearly all parts of
Denmark were represented. This made it necessary for the set-
tlers to use to a great extent the national Danish as a community
language in addition to their dialects. Most of them did not come
directly from Denmark, but from the northern states, especially
Illinois, Wisconsin, Minnesota, South Dakota, Iowa, Nebraska, and
Kansas, where they had learned English before their coming to
Texas.
Pioneering in Danevang was a severe test of the survival qual-
ities of Danish character. Being unacquainted with southern crops
and their cultivation the settlers first tried to produce mainly
northern crops. Unsuccessful in this, fodder for horses and cattle
had to be shipped into the settlement and the consequent scarcity
was one of the causes resulting in the loss of some of the stock
which the settlers had brought with them. Another cause is said
to have been the climate. Practically nothing was raised the first
two years and little the third. In 1897 an epidemic among the
horses killed off about seventy animals. Then there were rains,
storms, and floods.
Finally the Danevang farmers turned to the production of cotton

'The German form of this name is Schleswig.