View of the German Roman Catholic Teachers Meeting at St. Martin. The parish church served as background. Eight priests are part of the photo, but only two are identified: Reverend Leo Winter, Order of Saint Benedict (OSB), and Placid Wingerter, Order of Saint Benedict (OSB). J. Conrad Diekmann is on the extreme right.
Plat book of Stearns County, Minnesota, 1896.Title page names North West Publishing Co., but other copies include a title page that names Pinkney & Brown, successors to C.M. Foote & Co. as publisher. This alternative title page includes Complied from Offical Records and Actual Survey, by C.M. Foote & Co. 64 pages of color maps all of 37 Stearns County townships and 36 cities and towns. Includes patron directory (6 pages) and miscellaneous maps, diagrams, reports and road laws (6 pages) and 1 large insert, a fold-out map of the city of St. Cloud.
Schools in north-central Minnesota (1871-1909). This "cathedral on the prairie," like so many other churches dotting the landscape of Stearns County (sometimes referred to as "Little Germany") was reminiscent of the churches in the Old World. St. Martin's Parish first built the rectory (1875) and eleven years later built this church. They did not build a parochial school at this time, but, like most other German communities, invited the Benedictine sisters in 1877 to teach in the district school at St. Martin. The ensuing conflict so rocked the small Catholic community that the sisters chose to withdraw in 1891. After a sixty-year lapse of time, the parish built a parochial school for 212 pupils and the Benedictine sisters returned to teach there. It is most unusual that, despite the turmoil of the early history of St. Martin, fourty-four young women from St. Martin's Parish joined the Benedictine community in St. Joseph (Saint Benedict's Monastery Archives).