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Notes
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1. Rev.
Francis
X. Pierz, Die Indianer in
Nord-Amerika, ihre, Lebensweise, Sitten und Gebrauche, u.s.w.(St. Louis, 1855), Appendix. A translation of this
appendix which was originally written to supply prospective settlers
with information on the country and climate of central Minnesota may be
found in English translation in William P. Furlan, In Charity Unfeigned (Paterson, N.J.,
1952), 245-246. Father Pierz' original title for the descriptive
brochure was Eine kurze
Beschreibung des Minnesota-Territoriums. These pleadings from Father Pierz' pen were appearing
in the German newspaper, Der Wahrheitsfreund, as early as March 4, 1854, and were still going strong in
the April 16, 1862, issue of the same paper.
2. "Parish
Baptismal
Register," St. Joseph, Minnesota. As were many of the
Masses of those days, it was said in one of the pioneers' homes.
The next entry in the St. Joseph records is dated February 6,
1855. His visits to the people remained intermittent because of
his many duties. The arrival of the Benedictines on May 20, 1856,
remedied this situation somewhat.
3. William
B.
Mitchell, History of Stearns
County, Minnesota, I (Chicago,
1915), 250, gives 1855 as the date for the first Mass at Jacobs
Prairie. This mistake is said by many of the natives and older
families of St. James to have been made by merely counting back fifty
years from the Golden Jubilee of the parish. The jubilee,
however, had been postponed a year to coincide with the celebration of
the First Solemn Mass of the Rev. Pius Meinz, O.S.B., a son of the
parish. Further proof that the first Mass celebrated by Father
Pierz was not on the Michael Brixius farm in 1855, as stated by
Mitchell, and as some still believe, is the fact that Michael Brixius
did not arrive in Stearns County until 1857. According to a short
sketch of his life in Mitchell,
Ibid., II, p.1008, he left Germany in 1853 and after a three months voyage arrived in the United States. A blacksmith by trade, he found employment in Cincinnati for four years before moving to Minnesota. He lived on his claim until his death on April 13, 1910, except for the time he spent in St. Cloud during the Indian uprising. 4. The
Ludwig-Missionsverein was founded at Munich, Bavaria, on December 12, 1838, by
King Ludwig I for the express purpose of giving financial assistance to
the Catholic missions of Asia and America. The original letters
of Father Pierz' correspondence with the mission organization are in
the Minnesota section of the archives of the Ludwig- Missionsverein, preserved in the
chancery of the Archdiocese of Munich. The Rev. Colman Barry,
O.S.B., while on a research fellowship from the Catholic University of
America in 1950, made photostatic copies of this section for the
Archives of St. John's Abbey. Some of them were printed in
English translation for the first time in The Scriptorium, XII (August,
1952), 44-59, a magazine prepared by the clerics of St. John's Abbey
for private distribution, which stresses research in the history of St.
John's Abbey.
5. "Letters
of
Rev. Francis Xavier Pierz to Ludwig-Missionsverein"
The
Scriptorium, XII (August,
1952), 50. A section of this letter is missing, and one cannot
help wondering whether it might have helped much in the proving of the
point.
6. Ibid., p.52.
7. A
joch
is a tract of land plowed by a yoke of oxen one day.
8. "Pierz
Letters,"
op. cit., p.57.
9. Rev.
Bruno
Riss, "The Beginnings of St. John's Abbey," St. John's University Record, II (February, 1889), 16.
10. Ibid., p.16. It was a
small group of Yankee settlers who were causing the trouble. They
had preceded the German pioneers into the territory and were determined
to keep control of it. With their minds' nourished on Maria Monk
stories reaching them from the east, they were not too ready to accept
the Benedictines as the spiritual and, as it turned out, the civic
leaders in their community. On their arrival the monks had their
trouble in St. Cloud, also. Rev. Bruno Riss, The Record, II, p. 15, tells
that the very night they arrived in St. Cloud the inhabitants of the
district staked out the entire prairie between St. Cloud and the
crossing of the Sauk River, leaving not a spot in the vicinity upon
which the monks could settle. The explanation for this hostility
truly lies in the activities of the so-called Know Nothings.
Their hatred for the Papist thing, the Catholic Church, was outspoken
and resulted even in the burning of some convents. In 1855, just
a year before the coming of the Benedictines to Jacobs Prairie,
Massachusetts had appointed a committee to inspect the convents of the
state, with the expectation of disclosing untold terrible
enormities. The whole enterprise became a farce; but the general
public had not yet freed itself from the conviction that monasteries
were dens of Satan. cf. Theodore Maynard, The Story of American Catholicism (New York, 1946), 289-304.
11. Ibid. (March, 1889),
p.25. So fast did the claims go at St. James that on September 2, 1857,
the Rev. Cornelius Wittmann, O.S.B., wrote to Abbot Boniface Wimmer,
O.S.B., "The best claims which are in St. Jacob are all gone."
(Rev. Cornelius Wittmann, O.S.B., to Abbot Boniface Wimmer, O.S.B.,
Archives of the Archabbey of St. Vincent, Latrobe, Pennsylvania, which
in the remainder of the notes will be abbreviated AASV.) In fact
earlier (October 1, 1856) the Rev. Bruno Hiss, 0.S.B., had written to
Abbot Boniface, "I am not able to give the exact number of families
since so many are coming in each week; but . . . in St. Jacob over
sixty." (Rev. Bruno Hiss, O.S.B., to Abbot Boniface Wimmer,
O.S.B., AASV.)
12. Six
weeks
earlier Father Bruno was not so sure how the souls at St. Joseph,
Richmond, and Jacobs Prairie would be cared for. On July 4, 1856,
he wrote to a confrere at St. Vincent's that "the other three parishes
were given to us the day before yesterday, namely St. Joseph, fifteen
miles away (from St. Cloud); St. Jacob, seventeen miles away; and
Richmond, twenty-two miles away. I do not know who will take care
of these places yet. At any rate as long as we have no horse it
is quite inconvenient to go so far per pedes
Apostolorum in this great
heat, and added to this is the hardship of carrying on one's back
everything necessary for the celebration of Mass." (Rev. Bruno
Riss, O.S.B. to a Confrere, AASV.)
13. The Record, II, pp. 25-26.
14. Ibid.
(July-August),
p.74. The grasshoppers gave Father Clement Staub little
cause for worry. Making virtue out of necessity, he explained his
attitude to Abbot Boniface Wimmer on July 2, 1857. "I have
nothing more to do than to take care of Richmond and St. Jacob.
There is plenty of work and everything is in wonderful confusion.
I have started and accomplished quite a deal in both places, and with
the help of the grasshoppers it will go better as time goes on."
(Rev. Clement Staub, O.S.B., to Abbot Boniface Wimmer, O.S.B.,
AASV.) If the grasshoppers were keeping the settlers out of the
fields, at least they were keeping them in church.
15. Ibid. pp. 74-75.
16. Ibid., p. 75.
17. "St.
James
Church, Cold Spring, Minn.," My Message, IV (November, 1919), 355. The building and history of
this chapel will be treated chronologically with its actual erection in
1877.
18. Anna
Maria
Brunner was the grandmother of Eldred and Albert Peters, Cold
Spring, Minnesota; and the aunt of George, Michael, and William
Brunner, of the same city.
19. Father
Bruno
Riss reported to Abbot Boniface Wimmer on November 9, 1856, that
such situations caused no difficulty. "As far as the gratuitous
work of the people of the parish is concerned, it was offered as often
as required." Father Bruno goes on to say that sometimes there
were so many on hand to help that they were discouraged from coming
again because they had to stand around and wait for something to
do. Financial assistance was not lacking either, for in the same
letter he told of receiving at first $100 a month from Jacobs
Prairie. On another visit to St. James he received $200.
(Rev. Bruno Riss, O.S.B., to Abbot Boniface Wimmer, O.S.B., AASV.)
20. Mitchell,
op. cit., I, p.379. Among his famous medicines was one called
Philopaidia, which went on the market as a cure for tonsillitis.
According to the Reverend Timothy Majerus, O.S.B., The Church of St. Joseph 1871-1946 (St. Paul, 1946), 28-29, the students at St. John's
University used to call it
"Fill-up-and-die."
21. Peter
Meinz
also left his mark on the memories of the people of the Prairie
by donating two cows to aid in the payment for the rebuilding of the
church after the tornado of June 27, 1894. The two cows were
raffled off; the first prize went to John Doll, who, though blind,
picked the best one.
22. Mitchell,
op. cit., II, pp. 1006-1012.
23. The Record, III, p.27.
24. Ibid., p.27.
25. Ibid., p.27.
26. Ronald
Roloff,
O.S.B., "Our Parishes in Carpet bagging Days," The Scriptorium, VII (Christmas
tide, 1946), 22.
27. Ronald
Roloff,
O.S.B., "Our Parishes: The Plants Take Root," The Scriptorium, VII (Summer,
1947),40.
28. Ibid., p.40.
29. This
"Grasshopper
Chapel," as it has been called was built on five acres
donated by John Masselter. From the time of the first service
there it became a shrine for pilgrims who came by foot from miles
around. It was destroyed by the cyclone of 1894 and was not
rebuilt until recently by the Rev. Victor Ronellenfitsch, O.S.B., and
the members of the community of Cold Spring and other friends.
The plaque on the front of the restored chapel tells its
own history:
ASSUMPTION CHAPEL 1854 Father
Francis
X. Pierz offers first mass in this vicinity.
1877 Father
Leo
Winter, O.S.B., erects a chapel in honor of the Assumption of
B.V.M. to avert
grasshopper plague
1894 June
29
(sic) Tornado destroys chapel
1951 Chapel
rebuilt
during the pastorate of Father Victor Ronellenfitsch, O.S.B.,
by members of the
community and other friends
30.
Father Bonaventure has a special relation to the church in the
vicinity of Jacobs Prairie and especially to the "Grasshopper Chapel."
At present, at the age of eighty years, he is still serving as
pro-Vicar Apostolic of the Bahama Islands. He often tells the following
story of himself. In letters to Father Victor Ronellenfitsch,
O.S.B., and Mrs. Joseph Backes, a relative, he tells that the old
chapel, the one before the tornado, was known as the "Maria
Himmelsfahrt Kappelle." When he was eight years old, he became
seriously ill with an ailment commonly called St. Vitus' dance. He was
unable to speak, or to feed himself, or to get up unaided. His
mother, vowing that she would dedicate her son to the service of God,
began a series of pilgrimages. For months there was no sign of
improvement in his condition. Then, one Saturday,
she and her son
Henry walked barefooted from the family home in Luxemburg, Minnesota,
to the chapel outside of Cold Spring. They remained to attend
Father Leo Winter's Mass, and later they went to confession and
received Communion. It was not until Tuesday that they returned
home on foot, praying the Rosary all the way. Here they found the
invalid, now Father Bonaventure, up and able to care for himself.
31. Francis
Beauchesne
Thornton, Catholic Shrines
in the United States and Canada (New York, 1953),
316. "In 1894, a terrible tornado howled through the district and
the shrine was torn from its foundations. Part of it was broken
to matchwood; part of it came to rest in a grove of young oak trees,
bowed even to this day with the force of the blow. Only the
statue of the Virgin and Child escaped the fury of the storm."
cf. n. 29.
32. At
the
time of the cyclone and after there was some controversy as to
whether the parish church at Jacobs Prairie should be rebuilt, for some
believed that the parish could easily be split into sections which
would be allotted to the neighboring parishes which had for the most
part sprung from St. James. A delegation was sent to St. John's
Abbey by the people of the Prairie in order to insure their
rights. Prior Pancratius assured them that they would get a
pastor if they would rebuild. The decision had been left to
Father Pancratius, since Abbot Bernard was either too sick, or already
in his last agony at Shakopee, Minnesota.
33. My Message, IV (November,
1919), p.357. In 1915 the parish celebrated the sixtieth
anniversary of its organization in a simple, but fitting manner.
34. This
period
did, however, bring trouble for the trustees of the
parish. On Sunday, December 31, 1922, Mr. Peter Taufen, a trustee
of the parish, dropped dead from his chair at his home of a heart
attack. Fifteen years later Mr. Matt Jonas, another trustee,
repeated the same performance, but this
time it happened
in church just after the Mass had started on November 27, 1937.
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