St. Michael Historical Society

Home
United States
Saint Michael, MN
St. Michael Historical Society

Preserving the history of St. Michael, Minnesota! The St. Michael Historical Society began with a meeting of general interest in April of 2005.

By July the fifteen incorporating members approved Articles of Incorporation, created Bylaws and elected officers. Meetings are generally held the second Monday of each month at the St. Michael City Hall; however, please check the "Events" for exact times and locations as they do vary occasionally. Anyone with interest is welcome to attend. Michael Historical Society is a 501(c), nonprofit corporation and a member of the Minnesota Historical Society.

06/02/2026

This is the only known photograph which shows both the Historic 1892-completed, brick church, along with the 1866-built, wood church which was razed around 1902. At the very left you can just make out a one-story portion of the 1881 rectory which was likely a summer kitchen. Note: the vacant rectory which still stands next to the Historic Church was not built until 1914.

This photo was likely taken around 1900 by William Gustav Wallof of Minneapolis. Wallof was originally from St. Louis, MO but lived in Minneapolis starting in 1888 but returned to St. Louis before his death in 1947. In the attic of a Minneapolis house where he once rented a room, he left behind a box of mostly glass negatives, but they weren't discovered until years after his death. Most photos in this collection were taken around 1900. The plates were given to photograph collector Harold Vanderwater who later donated them to the Minneapolis Library, now the Hennepin County Library. Among the collection are four photos of St. Michael's Historic Church, this one being the most interesting because it also shows the previous church of St. Michael, and the two only stood together for about ten years. The parish used the previous church as a dinner and meeting hall for those ten years, but even in this photo one can see that it was in desperate need of paint, and no doubt the maintenance costs were no longer worth the utility of saving it (😔 sad historian's face); but such is the march of history. Fortunately, we have photos like this one to help us remember the many changes that continue to take place.

If you're wondering why Gustav Wallof was taking photos in St. Michael, so are we at the Historical Society. Most of his photos in the collection are of buildings and people in Minneapolis, but perhaps he was hired by one of the Minneapolis contractors who worked on the Historic Church to take photos for their portfolio. It's simply a guess.

05/19/2026

These two photos were originally published in either the Minneapolis Evening Star or the Minneapolis Morning Tribune. They were donated by the Minneapolis StarTribune (the merged company) to the Hennepin County Library, which is where these photos came from. The year is 1937 and St. Michael's Parish was celebrating the 50th anniversary of the St. Joseph's Verein. "Verein" is the German word for "club" or "association" and later this group was called the St. Joseph's Society. It was a Catholic fraternity and it started in St. Michael in 1887. In the top photo, according to the newspaper, were Wallace Barthel, Leroy Dehmer, and Matt Dehmer who were supposedly leading the parade. In the second photo we can see the Catholic school at left and so the perspective is looking east on Central Avenue, the photographer standing near the Corner Bar. The number of people in town suggests that there were people from other parishes marching in this parade. Do you recognize any faces in the crowd of marchers?

05/12/2026

The oldest photo showing downtown St. Michael is this one from August of 1889. The original glass negative is in the collection of the archives at St. John's Abbey in Collegeville. The photographer was Fr. Peter Engel (later Abbot Engel) who spent his boyhood in St. Michael before heading off to St. John's for school. He eventually became a science professor and then the abbot. One of his areas of interest was photography, which was both an art and a science that required specialized equipment. The first affordable camera for personal use, the Kodak Brownie, would not be available until 1900. Unfortunately, in the original photo the white buildings are difficult to differentiate from the light sky, and the grass of the foreground just looks dark. This is one instance when the colorizing feature of AI (Gemini) helps us get a better picture, literally, of what the village of St. Michael looked like in its very early days. Fr. Engel, the photographer, must have been standing near the present entrance of the BK Taphouse, looking to the northeast. Notice that there are no buildings on the west side of Main Street yet; only that fence. At the far left is the rear of the public school house which faced Central Avenue on the present site of the Cornerstone building. The Ditto's Bar building, which existed in 1889, would have been just left of the school. The next building is the priest's house which was across Central Avenue from the public school facing east. Then, you can see the second church of St. Michael which stood on the corner of Central and Main where the Catholic elementary school is now. Next is the first Corner Bar which was torn down 1896-1897 to build the one people remember. Next is the store and hotel John K. Zachman which also housed the post office. The first buildings on the west side of Main Street would not go up until 1905.

05/05/2026

This photo was taken in 1951 in commemoration of Henry Kasper's 90th birthday. Henry was likely one of the oldest (if not the oldest) person in St. Michael since reaching 90 was rare at that time. Henry was born in 1861 in Ohio but was brought to St. Michael when less than a year old. He was raised by his parents Simon and Katharina (Halter) Kasper on a farm near the roundabout at 30th Street and Co. Rd. 35. He purchased is own farm along 35th Street, a road many still call "Kaspers' Road" because so many Kasper relations ended up having farms there. Henry married Cecelia Vetsch in 1888, but she sadly passed away 12 years later in 1900. Five of their six children are standing behind Henry in this photo. The first child, Bertha, died at the age of 30 in 1919. The other children, and their spouses, are from left: Ottilia (Kolles) and Alois; Rose (Barthel) and Leo; Theresa and Marcus Berning; Aurelia and Tony Berning; and Lena and Albert Barthel. Henry died at the age of 93 in 1954 and was buried next to Cecelia in the old cemetery by the historic church.

04/28/2026

Here's a pic from a very specific moment in time. It was the late winter of 1958, likely February or early March. Fr. Geisenkoetter had already obtained architectural plans for a new, larger convent to house the increasing number of nuns needed to teach at both the elementary and high schools. The plans for the new convent were replicas of a convent built in Mankato. The old convent, then 53 years old, would need to come down and Fr. Geisenkoetter asked the farmers to take care of this task before the spring planting season. During the construction of the new convent, which is still being used by the parish as administrative offices for the school, the sisters used the school gymnasium as their dormitory. The new convent went up quickly that spring and summer. In the background on the left you can just make out the home of Lloyd and Rita Dick along Ash Avenue. On the right in the background was the home of Jerome and Helen Duerr. The spot where this old convent sat is now parking for the Catholic school. The men in the photo cannot be specifically identified, but we know that Harvey Zahler was one of them. Does anyone know of any others who were involved in the demolition?

04/21/2026

Loretta Berning shared this photo of the Millside Tavern with the historical society many years ago. She thought it was from about 1940, but it could be from a few years later. Loretta's husband, Everett Berning, started selling beer out of a cooler to mill workers in the mid 1930s. In 1938 he moved an old blacksmith shop, previously used by the Berning family, to a spot near the bridge and remodeled it into the original tavern. Over the years this structure was remodeled and added onto. On the north end of the tavern there is currently a game room that was once used for parts and sales of Rupp snowmobiles and mini bikes, a side business that Everett got into in the late 1960s when the snowmobile craze started to take off in Minnesota. In addition to their famous burgers many will remember visiting the Millside Tavern for a cone of Brown's Velvet Ice Cream.

04/14/2026

Louis Welter provided us with another beautiful shot of downtown St. Michael from June of 1968. Taken from the steeple windows of the Historic Church, we can see most of the businesses that existed along East Central Avenue. At far left we can see the cream-yellow building owned by Erwin Zahler out of which Don Klaers barbered. Next, coming west, is Allen Jaeb's Philips 66 filling station. Hidden behind the trees is the Schumm house attached to the store which comes up to the sidewalk. In 1968 the store and the little tavern attached on the west side had been vacant since 1965 when Vic Schumm had passed away. Those buildings were razed in 1969. The next building was Kilian Hardware, run by Carroll and Armella Kilian. This building, the only one on that side of the street still standing, is now Domino's Pizza. Next is Clarence Gutzwiller's Texaco, which in a couple of years would be run by Lyle Robeck. The next two little buildings were Dehmer's Meat Market and Loren Schumm's Electric Shop. Finally, we catch the rear of the Corner Bar. Across the street, in the foreground of the photo, we see the Catholic School which includes the south-end addition that had been added in 1962 to the older 1940 school. In the background we can make out the Dehmer family barn and further near the horizon we can just make out the first homes which had been built along Edgewood Drive. Although I-94 would not open for another six years, St. Michael was already starting to experience growth from non-natives moving to the little village.

04/06/2026

This photo is courtesy of the Tom Becker, Sr. family. Tom is the young man seated at the far left. We believe that this is the 8th grade graduation class of 1914 of St. Michael Catholic School. Tom is sitting next to the pastor, Fr. Anton Miks, who arrived in 1904 and remained pastor until his death in 1937. The Historical Society would love your help in identifying the other graduates in the photo. Tom Becker was born in April of 1900 so it seems likely that the other graduates were born in 1899 or 1900, although rules regarding the age at which a child started school may have been different then, and the nuns advanced or held back students as they saw fit. Tom Becker lived 2.5 miles from the school, but other kids who lived outside of the village may have attended one of the public country schools. If the family lived in the village, then the children almost certainly attended the Catholic school. The fact that there are more girls than boys in the photo might be because parents decided to keep boys on the farm after the sixth grade, which was common then. Boys who remained at school for 7th and 8th grade physically attended the public school in town which was segregated from the girls. Girls and boys graduated from both the Catholic school and from Public School #120, which was overseen by the Wright County Superintendent of Schools. Some of the kids pictured here may have continued high school in Buffalo or may have been sent to a Catholic boarding school as St. Michael's Catholic high school did not start until the early 1950s and the public high school not until 1968. Leave a comment if you spot a familiar face.

03/31/2026

In case you were wondering, it's been 20 years already since the redevelopment of the southwest corner of the Main and Central intersection. This photo was taken in the spring of 2006. While the Cornerstone Building has had various occupants, Eyewest and Edward Jones are long-time tenants. The second building which is now Main Street Farmer and the BK Taphouse was originally built to be a Thrifty White Pharmacy.

03/24/2026

Gemini AI software was used to colorize this circa 1910 photo of the sanctuary of the Historic Church of St. Michael. After completion in 1892, the interior of the church remained largely undecorated until the summer of 1906 when the parish hired George Satory, well-known church decorator from Wabasha, Minnesota, to decorate the interior walls and ceiling with stencils. Unfortunately, no color photographs were known to have been taken of the interior before it was all repainted again in 1956. While we can't know for sure how accurate this is, there is a church interior, also done by George Satory about the same time, that has been maintained. The church is St. Mary's Catholic Church in St. Benedict, Kansas; and the images of that church interior are consistent with what AI has generated for St. Michael's. Those who remember the interior decoration between 1956 and 1990 will recall a richer palette of colors, but less intricate in design. Newspaper accounts from 1956 said that water damage and falling plaster were the reasons for the redecorating then. In 1990 it was similar reasons.

Address

11800 Town Center Drive NE
Saint Michael, MN
55376

Telephone

+17634167967

Website

http://www.saintmichaelhistory.org/

Alerts

Be the first to know and let us send you an email when St. Michael Historical Society posts news and promotions. Your email address will not be used for any other purpose, and you can unsubscribe at any time.

Contact The Museum

Send a message to St. Michael Historical Society:

Shortcuts

Want your museum to be the top-listed Museum in Saint Michael?