Sugar Creek Swedish Settlement
Montrose Township

Researched and compiled by Sally Youngquist

 

 This area was settled by immigrants from Sweden and Norway in the mid 1800's. Its been said that when people settled in the US, they came to a place much like their homeland. Lee County has one of the largest wooded areas in Iowa. Here many creeks flow and join together before emptying into the Des Moines River. They wanted land with timber on it. They would use it to build their homes, fences and out buildings. They could warm themselves through the long cold winters with fires, built with the logs cut from their land. The land was slowly cleared for vegetable gardens, orchards and crops to feed themselves and their livestock.

By 1873 a small group of Swedish men formed the "Swenska Evangelisk Lutherska Victoria Forsamlingen. Here they would meet for worship and friendship. The name was changed to Oak Grove Church in 1896. In 1920 it joined the First Lutheran Church in Keokuk. Occasional services and funeral services were held there as late as 1935. The community used the church until the early 1950's when it was sold.

Across the road from the church was the Oak Grove School. The one room school was first a log cabin until 1889 when a frame building was built. The children of the first immigrants attended school here, as well as many of their grandchildren

Three miles to the south and west is Scandinavin Cemetery, once refereed to as "Anderson Cemetery." The first recorded burials here started in the 1850's. The land was owned originally by a Norwegian,  Andrew Anderson,  The Norwegians were the first Scandinavans to come to Sugar Creek.