Ramsey County History – Spring 2003: “Roots with the English—St. Paul’s First German Methodist Church”

Roots with the English—St. Paul’s First German Methodist Church
Author: Helen Miller Dickison

The First German Methodist Church of St. Paul was founded in 1852, a time when German immigration to Minnesota was soaring. In that year, the congregation built a church on Sixth Street between Broadway and today’s Wall Street. By 1858, they needed a larger building and constructed one abutting the older one. They also bought land in Woodbury for camp meetings. The congregation used the Methodist model of study classes and had “admonishers” who warned parishioners of lapses in Christian behavior. The congregation moved again into a new church on Olive and Eleventh in 1892 that was designed by Cass Gilbert. It contained a splendid organ. Services in the new building gradually transitioned from being conducted in German to English. For many years the congregation struggled to pay off its debt for the building, and, over time, parishioners came to dislike the changes happening to the neighborhood around the building. When a railroad agreed to buy the church and land, the congregation moved again, this time to Fairmount and Saratoga streets, where it has worshipped since 1917.
PDF of Dickison article