St. Francis Xavier Church - Grand Marais, Minnesota - Minnesota Historical Markers on Waymarking.com

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St. Francis Xavier Church

From the 1700s until the early 1900s, itinerant missionaries braved extreme hardships to minister sporadically to North Shore settlers.  In 1855, Jesuit missionaries from Fort William, Ontario, served Chippewa City, an Ojibwe community of about 100 families located near this site.  The Jesuits conducted monthly services in residents' homes until St Francis Xavier Church was established by Father Joseph Specht in 1895.  To raise money for construction, local women held basket socials.  Enticed by home-baked foods, area lumberjacks bid heavily on the handmade birch bark baskets.  The small clapboard church became both a religious and social center for the community.

Jesuit priests served Chippewa City until 1905 when Benedictines from St. John's Abbey in Collegeville, Minnesota, became responsible for this territory.  They, like the Jesuits, made only monthly vists until 1933, when Father Oswald Johannes became the resident pastor.  For a time, he alternated Sunday services between this church and the newly-constructed St. John the Baptist Church in Grand Marais.  A declining congregation forced St. Francis Xavier Church, the last remaining builidn in Chippewa City, to close in 1936.  Its religious functions were transferred to the Grand Marais church.  Although empty for decades, this church remains an important example of the state's 19th century Indian missions.  It was restored in 1970-1974.