Jacobs Prairie is an

unincorporated community An unincorporated area is a region that is not governed by a local municipal corporation. Widespread unincorporated communities and areas are a distinguishing feature of the United States and Canada. Most other countries of the world either have ...

in Wakefield Township,

Stearns County Stearns County is a county in the U.S. state of Minnesota. As of the 2020 census, the population was 158,292. Its county seat and largest city is St. Cloud. The county was founded in 1855. It was originally named for Isaac Ingalls Stevens, the ...

Minnesota Minnesota () is a state in the upper midwestern region of the United States. It is the 12th largest U.S. state in area and the 22nd most populous, with over 5.75 million residents. Minnesota is home to western prairies, now given over to ...

, United States. The community is located along Stearns County Road 2 at Glacier Road near Cold Spring and Rockville.

History

The community was homesteaded beginning in 1854 by German- and

Luxembourgish Luxembourgish ( ; also ''Luxemburgish'', ''Luxembourgian'', ''Letzebu(e)rgesch''; Luxembourgish: ) is a West Germanic language that is spoken mainly in Luxembourg. About 400,000 people speak Luxembourgish worldwide. As a standard form of th ...

-speaking Catholic settlers; including Bavarians,

Eifel The Eifel (; lb, Äifel, ) is a low mountain range in western Germany and eastern Belgium. It occupies parts of southwestern North Rhine-Westphalia, northwestern Rhineland-Palatinate and the southern area of the German-speaking Community of ...

ers, and

Luxembourgers Luxembourgers ( ; lb, Lëtzebuerger ) are a Germanic ethnic group and nation native to their nation state of Luxembourg, where they make up around half of the population. They share the culture of Luxembourg and speak Luxembourgish. Luxembourg ...

. The settlers were invited to the area by

Slovenian Slovene or Slovenian may refer to: * Something of, from, or related to Slovenia, a country in Central Europe * Slovene language, a South Slavic language mainly spoken in Slovenia * Slovenes The Slovenes, also known as Slovenians ( sl, Sloven ...

Roman Catholic priest The priesthood is the office of the ministers of religion, who have been commissioned ("ordained") with the Holy orders of the Catholic Church. Technically, bishops are a priestly order as well; however, in layman's terms ''priest'' refers only ...

, missionary, and

poet A poet is a person who studies and creates poetry. Poets may describe themselves as such or be described as such by others. A poet may simply be the creator ( thinker, songwriter, writer, or author) who creates (composes) poems (oral or writte ...

Fr.

Francis Xavier Pierz Francis Xavier Pierz ( sl, Franc Pirc or ''Franc Pirec''; german: link=no, Franz Pierz) (November 20, 1785 – January 22, 1880) was a Roman Catholic priest and missionary to the Ottawa and Ojibwe Indians in present-day Michigan, Wisconsin, Ontar ...

, who had submitted letters and advertisements to the major German-language newspapers across the United States, like ''

Der Wahrheitsfreund ''Der Wahrheitsfreund'' or ''Der Wahrheits-Freund'' ("The Friend of Truth") was the first German language Catholic newspaper in the United States, and one of many German-language newspapers in Cincinnati, Ohio during the nineteenth century. It was ...

'' (''The Friend of Truth''), and in Europe, urging "good, pious" German Catholics to venture to the Sauk River Valley of central Minnesota. Fr. Pierz described the Sauk River Valley as a “land flowing with milk and honey” as well as safe from disease and anti-Catholic discrimination. The community's name derives from two of its earliest settlers, brothers Nicholas and Theodore Jacobs. The community quickly established a country school, a blacksmith shop, and a church of simple means. The church, known as St. James Parish, served as a focal point for the settlers of Jacobs Prairie as well as settlers in neighboring areas, including St. Nicholas, Cold Spring, and Rockville. During the grasshopper plagues of 1856-57, the parishioners of St. James engaged in votive processions, seeking deliverance from the locusts. Twenty years later in August 1877, during another locust outbreak, the parishioners again engaged in procession, processing from Jacobs Prairie to a chapel specially built "to secure relief from the damage done by the hordes of grasshoppers" some four miles away just outside of Cold Spring known as ''Maria Hilf'' (currently known as

Assumption Chapel Assumption Chapel, also known as the Grasshopper Chapel, is a Catholic Church, Roman Catholic church situated on the outskirts of Cold Spring, Minnesota. It was constructed in 1877, in petition for relief from the Grasshopper Plagues that devast ...

). The German-language newspaper, ''Der Nordstern'', published in St. Cloud covered the event, noting that the Jacobs Prairie pilgrims "were led by a wagon carrying the statue of the Virgin, and surrounding the wagon were twelve girls dressed in white and bearing white flags." The establishment of individual parishes in Cold Spring, Richmond, and Rockville in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, plus the construction of a flour mill, brewery, and granite company in Cold Spring along the nearby Sauk River shifted populations and altered economic opportunities in Jacobs Prairie. Today, the community largely comprises farmland, residences, and the St. James Parish. The current church, located on County Road 2 between

St. Joseph Joseph (; el, Ἰωσήφ, translit=Ioséph) was a 1st-century Jewish man of Nazareth who, according to the canonical Gospels, was married to Mary, the mother of Jesus, and was the legal father of Jesus. The Gospels also name some brothers ...

and Cold Spring, was built in 1931 and is the fifth building to be constructed for the community which now consists of approximately seventy-five families and thirty-five singles, widows and widowers; previous buildings were destroyed by cyclone or fire. St. James Parish has the distinction of being the oldest incorporated parish in the Catholic Diocese of St. Cloud west of the Mississippi River.

History

References

Further reading