Saint Augusta or St. Augusta, formerly named Ventura, is a city in Stearns County, Minnesota, United States, directly south of the city of St. Cloud. The population was 3,497 at the 2020 census.
St. Augusta is part of the Saint Cloud Metropolitan Statistical Area.
History
Writing in 1997, Jewish-American historian of America's religious architecture Marilyn J. Chiat described the early history of the region as follows, "Father Francis X. Pierz, a missionary to Indians in central Minnesota, published a series of articles in 1851 in German Catholic newspapers advocating Catholic settlement in central Minnesota. Large numbers of immigrants, mainly German, but also Slovenian and Polish, responded. Over 20 parishes where formed in what is now Stearns County, each centered on a church-oriented hamlet. As the farmers prospered, the small frame churches were replaced by more substantial buildings of brick or stone such as St. Mary, Help of Christians, a Gothic Revival stone structure built in 1873. Stearns County retains in its German character and is still home to one of the largest rural Catholic populations in Anglo-America."Marilyn J. Chiat (1997), America's Religious Architecture: Sacred Places for Every Community, Preservation Press. Page 146.
St. Augusta received its name because Fr. Pierz accidentally found a German language holy card dedicated to St. Augustine lying in the nearby field previously chosen for the building of their parish church. At Fr. Pierz's suggestion, the town was named for the Saint, although the city's name was somehow garbled in the process. The original holy card, however, is still preserved in the parish archives.Janice Wedl, O.S.B. (2005), A Dwelling Place for God: The History of St. Mary, Help of Christians Parish, St. Augusta, Minnesota, North Star Press, St. Cloud, Minnesota. Pages 4-5.
Similarly to many other Stearns County German communities, the early settlers of St. Augusta included at least one Catholic family of German Jewish descent. The family patriarch was Baldassar Mayer (1816-1890), a native of the Grand Duchy of Baden. Raised in Orthodox Judaism, Mayer had converted to Roman Catholicism before his marriage to Dutch-American Gentile Elizabeth Hagedorn in Mercer County, Ohio. From the time of their first arrival in 1865, the Mayer family was very heavily involved in St. Mary, Help of Christians Parish, and Baldassar Mayer helped build the current church building during the early 1870s. He always retained, however, a very strong sense of pride in his Jewish ancestry and, shortly before his death on 4 July 1890, Mayer asked for his kippah, sat up in his deathbed, and sang two traditional blessings from the Hebrew Bible as an expression of his love for his family and his hopes for their future. Baldassar Mayer sang Eshet Ḥayil (, "Woman of Valor") Book of Proverbs Chapter 31 Verses 10–31, over his wife, and Birkut Kohanim (, "The Priestly Blessing"), Book of Numbers Chapter 6 Verses 23-27, over their many children and grandchildren.Janice Wedl, O.S.B. (2005), A Dwelling Place for God: The History of St. Mary, Help of Christians Parish, St. Augusta, Minnesota, North Star Press, St. Cloud, Minnesota. Pages 32-33.
Just like the many other Stearns County German communities surrounding it, St. Augusta has produced plenty of voluntary recruits to the United States military during every one of America's wars from the American Civil War to the present, and even to the two World Wars that were fought against the St. Augustaners and Luxemburgers' ancestral homeland (). On every Memorial Day, the local American Legion and Auxiliary holds annual ceremonies in all three cemeteries within the city, during which the names of all deceased local veterans are read aloud.Janice Wedl, O.S.B. (2005), A Dwelling Place for God: The History of St. Mary, Help of Christians Parish, St. Augusta, Minnesota, North Star Press, St. Cloud, Minnesota. Pages 98-100.
Just as similarly to other communities in rural Stearns County during the Prohibition era, St. Augusta was a center for the secret distilling of a very high quality form of moonshine called Minnesota 13. According to local historian Sr. Janice Wedl, O.S.B., "People did get thirsty and made their own beer and hard liquor to drink and to sell. When the law caught up with them, the bottles containing the splendid brew were taken to the dump and smashed. For a while there was a moonshine still on the West side of the dam, near the Henry Kaeter farm. One night, during a dance at Schill's Hall, a huge explosion could be heard and a big fire could be seen near the dam. The Feds had discovered the moonshine still and blew it up."Janice Wedl, O.S.B. (2005), A Dwelling Place for God: The History of St. Mary, Help of Christians Parish, St. Augusta, Minnesota, North Star Press, St. Cloud, Minnesota. Pages 107-109.
Also according to Sr. Janice, "The year the Prohibition Law was repealed (1933), Matt and Marie Ramacher bought the former Beumer Store and opened a grocery store and bar in downtown St. Augusta. This was the first bar in operation in St. Augusta Township after beer sales were legal again."Janice Wedl, O.S.B. (2005), A Dwelling Place for God: The History of St. Mary, Help of Christians Parish, St. Augusta, Minnesota, North Star Press, St. Cloud, Minnesota. Page 109.
Originally Saint Augusta Township, it incorporated as a city on May 2, 2000 in order to avoid annexation by the city of Saint Cloud. St. Augusta was named in the 1850s after a local church. The city contains one property listed on the National Register of Historic Places: the 1873 St. Mary Help of Christians Church and its 1890 rectory.
For a short time Saint Augusta was officially named Ventura in honor of then Governor Jesse Ventura, but voters decided on its current name months after incorporation, and the name was officially changed to Saint Augusta on November 7, 2000.Population Estimates Geographic Change Notes: Minnesota, May 19, 2006. Accessed May 28, 2008.
St. Boniface Chapel & pilgrimage shrine
The Christian pilgrimage shrine ()Fr. Robert J. Voigt (1991), The Story of Mary and the Grasshoppers, Cold Spring, Minnesota. Pages 17. ()Fr. Robert J. Voigt (1991), The Story of Mary and the Grasshoppers, Cold Spring, Minnesota. Pages 28. known as St. Boniface Chapel was built in 1877, similarly to the far more famous "Assumption Chapel" near Cold Spring, as a desperate petition for divine intervention from the Rocky Mountain locusts; a now extinct species of giant grasshopper, whose enormous migrating swarms blotted out the sunlight and, as described in the novel On the Banks of Plum Creek, Laura Ingalls Wilder, devastated farming communities throughout North America between 1856 and 1902.
Sr. Janice Wedl, O.S.B. has written about the four-year-long Locust Plague of 1874, "These huge insects destroyed everything in their path - crops, clothing hanging on wash lines, even fence posts. Nothing was safe, and many families lost everything they were growing for winter and all the crops they had planned to sell or feed to their livestock. Though people flailed at the insects, the swarms were so extensive, so pervasive that they had little hope of salvaging their lives without Divine help. The parishioners of St. Augusta and Luxemburg made a pledge to build a chapel and every year make a pilgrimage to it to pray that any future plagues be averted."Janice Wedl, O.S.B. (2005), A Dwelling Place for God: The History of St. Mary, Help of Christians Parish, St. Augusta, Minnesota, North Star Press, St. Cloud, Minnesota. Pages 110.
Local farmer Henry Kaeter donated a plot of land "half-way between their parish churches - on a small tree-crowned hill".Fr. Robert J. Voigt (1991), The Story of Mary and the Grasshoppers, Cold Spring, Minnesota. Pages 25. Ignatz Henkemeyer later recalled, "The grasshoppers were real bad. Everything dried up. After we finished at St. Boniface's, the rain started to fall, and all the hoppers flew up and disappeared."Janice Wedl, O.S.B. (2005), A Dwelling Place for God: The History of St. Mary, Help of Christians Parish, St. Augusta, Minnesota, North Star Press, St. Cloud, Minnesota. Pages 111.
Annual pilgrimages to the shrine continued for many years afterwards on June 5, the Feast Day of St. Boniface, an English Benedictine missionary, Bishop, and martyr instrumental to the Christianisation of the Germanic peoples; and who is still revered as the "Apostle to the Germans", Patron Saint of the Germanosphere and the German diaspora.Fr. Robert J. Voigt (1991), The Story of Mary and the Grasshoppers, Cold Spring, Minnesota. Page 25.
According to Fr. Robert J. Voigt, "The women decorated the chapel with flowers and choirs took their turn in singing and brought an organ along... Close to a hundred people, representing virtually every family, came. They came on foot, some as far as six miles, walked two by two and recited the rosary. A large spring wagon accompanied the people and carried the lunch."
According to Fr. Robert J. Voigt, while praying the rosary, it is traditional in Stearns County German culture to mention which of the Mysteries of the Rosary is being focussed upon right after the Name of Jesus during each Hail Mary.Fr. Robert J. Voigt (1991), The Story of Mary and the Grasshoppers, Cold Spring, Minnesota. Page 41. Local pilgrims praying the rosary upon St. Boniface's Day, would also add, following every Hail Mary, the additional petition, () ("St. Boniface, pray for us!")
Ignatz Henkemeyer also recalled, "I remember looking down the hill. When the people came up the hill, singing all the way, it looked like a long train."Janice Wedl, O.S.B. (2005), A Dwelling Place for God: The History of St. Mary, Help of Christians Parish, St. Augusta, Minnesota, North Star Press, St. Cloud, Minnesota. Pages 110-111.
According to Fr. Coleman J. Barry, there is traditionally a very intensive rivalry between parish choirs in Stearns County German culture. From the time of early settlement, every local parish choir used B.H.F. Hellebusch's Katholisches Gesang und Gebet Buch and the six Sing Messen found therein until the Regensburg-style of Gregorian Chant was introduced beginning in the 1880s. Parish choir-directors often doubled as local school-masters and were traditionally referred to as, (), or "The Church Fathers". Catholic hymns in the German language (), which were always carefully chosen to fit the occasion, were also traditionally sung during Low Mass.Coleman J. Barry (1956), Worship and Work: Saint John's Abbey and University 1856-1956, Order of St. Benedict, Collegeville, Minnesota. Pages 90-92.
Due to these intensive traditional parish rivalries, whenever the St. Boniface's Day pilgrimages would be followed by a Solemn High Mass at the chapel, both parish choirs would take turns singing. The Mass would always be followed with an open air dinner accompanied by dancing and the playing and singing of German folk music.