St. Joseph or Saint Joseph It is home to the College of Saint Benedict and Saint John's University.
St. Joseph is part of the St. Cloud metropolitan area. The unincorporated Florida community of St. Joseph, Florida, is named after the Minnesota city.
History
Originally home to the native Dakota people until the signing of the Treaty of Traverse des Sioux in 1851, St. Joseph was laid out in 1855.
Writing in 1997, Jewish-American historian of America's religious architecture Marilyn J. Chiat described early settlement in the region, "Father Francis X. Pierz, a missionary to [Native Americans] 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... Stearns County retains in its German character and is still home to one of the largest rural Catholic populations in Anglo-America."
St. Joseph was named by early German and Slovenian settlers after the patron saint of their newly erected log chapel.
Pioneer settlement in St. Joseph is very important to the history of the Slovenian diaspora. Pierz had previously brought with him from Slovenia his 12-year-old nephew Joseph Notsch Jr., the son of his sister, Apollonia Notsch. Notsch accompanied Pierz on trips, serving Mass and cooking. In 1855, Notsch's parents and siblings became the first Slovenian family to emigrate to the New World, and carried with them an altarpiece for Pierz painted by Matevž Langus. The Notsch family was accused of foolishness by Janez Bleiweis in the Ljubliana newspaper Novice. Apollonia Notsch later wrote a famous letter from her family's homestead in St. Joseph, describing the family's passage on the immigrant ship, her impressions of frontier life in the Minnesota Territory, and her joy at having emigrated to America. The letter was published in Novice and convinced many other Slovenes to follow the Notsch family's lead.
According to Bruno Riss, a Benedictine missionary priest from Augsburg and founding father of St John's Abbey, the May 1856 arrival of the first Benedictine priests in the area at the invitation of Bishop Joseph Crétin was opposed by some local Catholic pioneers. This was because many local settlers had been tenant farmers in the German States and had emigrated to America seeking to own the farmland on which they worked. Recalling that religious orders in Germany had often been their landlords and fearing that the Benedictine order might turn them back into tenant farmers, the parishioners wrote to the Bishop "begging him not to impose monks on them". The Bishop was outraged and placed St. Joseph under an interdict until the parishioners apologized in August 1856. The Benedictines won the trust of local settlers by regularly helping them to both choose and defend their new homesteads.
After the lifting of the interdict against St. Joseph, the first Rocky Mountain locust plague to strike Central Minnesota began on the Feast of the Assumption of 15 August 1856, during the preaching of a mission by Father Francis Xavier Weninger inside the newly erected log chapel. The locusts darkened the sky and pounded upon the rooftop of the chapel so loudly that they were mistaken for a hailstorm. Only after the mission did the real reason for the "storm" become apparent, and the clouds of "hoppers" swiftly devoured both the crops and much of the seed grain, leaving the newly arrived settlers destitute.
St. Benedict's Academy at Saint Joseph was a Native American residential school operated by the College of Saint Benedict, opening in 1884. The school held Native American women and taught them traditional school subjects, like spelling, reading, and math, as well as sewing, ornamental needlework, baking, cooking, laundry, dairy-work, and gardening.
St. Joseph was incorporated in 1890
Geography
According to the United States Census Bureau, the city has an area of , all land.
Stearns County Road 75 serves as a main route in the community. Other routes include County Roads 2, 3, 121, 133, and 134. Interstate 94/US Highway 52 is nearby.
thumb|right|The College of Saint Benedict
Some of the city's major landmarks include St. Joseph Catholic Church, St. Benedict's Monastery, and the College of St. Benedict. The College of Saint Benedict is an all-women's Catholic college, and the complex is noted in the downtown area for the high spire of St. Joseph's Church and the rotunda and dome of the Monastery and College Sacred Heart Chapel. The architecture is different from other buildings and the major structures are visible from miles away.