DUANE
Duane's take
Here's my telling of what the official marker has to say about Type Cemetery out in Williamson County. Now, before we get to the Swedes and the Danes and a post office named after a printing machine, we've got to start at the beginning — and the beginning, around here, goes back to the 1840s. That's when the earliest Anglo settlers came into this stretch of country.
They called their little community Post Oak Island, named for an isolated oak grove sitting out there between Bastrop and Circleville. Not a bad name, honestly. Evocative.
You can picture it. But many of those pioneers had moved on before the next chapter of this place even got started. That's the way it goes sometimes — one wave of people breaks, recedes, and another rolls in.
In the 1890s, Swedish and Danish immigrants arrived and began putting down roots of their own. One of those settlers was a Swedish-born man named August Smith, who owned a store that straddled the county line between Bastrop and Williamson counties — one foot in each county, which has a certain frontier entrepreneurial logic to it. In 1902, Smith opened the Type Post Office right there in that store.
And where'd the name Type come from? Well, the marker tells us Smith probably named the community for the printing machine owned by his friend Jonas Sunvision. A printing machine.
Out here on the Texas prairie. Sometimes a name has a story behind it you just couldn't make up. The Swedish Free Mission Church was founded in May 1908, and when it was, the congregation needed a place to lay their dead.
That land came from Peder and Christine Nygaard, who conveyed the property that became Type Cemetery. And when you walk among those stones, you can feel that old-country connection. The tombstones of Anna Amalia Hansen — also recorded as Hanson — who died in 1910, and Christina Fredrickson, who died in 1915, are both inscribed in Swedish.
Not English. Swedish. The marker calls that merely one indication of how strong the cultural identification ran among those early settlers.
The families buried there before 1950 were primarily Carlsons, Hansons, Nygaards, Nymans, and Swensons — Scandinavian names, solid as oak, carved into Texas limestone. But the story doesn't freeze there. After 1950, the number of Scandinavian burials drops off, and the marker is plain about why: assimilation into American culture, and the dispersal of young people to cities.
That's not a tragedy, exactly. It's just time doing what time does. In 1954, the Swedish Free Mission Church merged with Kimbro's Free Church.
By 1998, when someone counted the graves, there were 36 in all. Eleven were those of Swedish immigrants themselves. Fifteen more were first or second generation Scandinavian Texans.
And on the eastern edge of the cemetery, several Mexican graves were found as well. As for who tends this place now — the Yegua Creek Evangelical Free Church relocated to this very site in 1987, and they are the ones maintaining Type Cemetery today. Thirty-six graves.
Swedish tombstone inscriptions. A post office named for a printing machine. Post Oak Island is long gone as a name, but something of all those people — Anglo, Scandinavian, Mexican — is still right there, between Bastrop and Circleville, waiting for whoever takes the time to look.
What the marker says
The earliest Anglo settlers of this area came to the vicinity in the 1840s. They called their community Post Oak Island for an isolated oak grove between Bastrop and Circleville. Many of these pioneers had moved on by the time Swedish and Danish immigrants arrived in the 1890s. Swedish-born August Smith owned a store which straddled the line between Bastrop and Williamson counties. Smith opened the Type Post Office in that store in 1902, probably naming the community for the printing machine owned by his friend Jonas Sunvision. The Type Cemetery was established on land conveyed by Peder and Christine Nygaard when the Swedish Free Mission Church was founded in May 1908. The tombstones of Anna Amalia Hansen (Hanson) (d. 1910) and Christina Fredrickson (d. 1915) are inscribed in Swedish, merely one indication of the strong cultural identification of the early settlers with their homelands. Burials before 1950 are primarily those of members of the Carlson, Hanson, Nygaard, Nyman, and Swenson families. The small number of Scandinavian burials in the cemetery after 1950 reflects the group's assimilation into American culture and the dispersal of local young people to cities. In 1954 the Swedish Free Mission Church merged with Kimbro's Free Church. Of the 36 graves counted in 1998, eleven were those of Swedish immigrants and fifteen were first or second generation Scandinavian Texans. Several Mexican graves were located on the eastern edge of the cemetery. The Yegua Creek Evangelical Free Church, which relocated to this site in 1987, maintains the Type Cemetery. (1998)