Photograph of Saint Benedict's Monastery — Photograph by Bobak Ha'Eri, CC BY 3.0. Via Wikimedia Commons.

St. Benedict's Convent and College Historic District

Listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1989.

From the record

“Saint Benedict's Monastery is a monastery of the Sisters of the Order of Saint Benedict, in St. The 18th and current prioress of Saint Benedict's Monastery is Sister Karen Rose, OSB who was installed on June 4, 2023.”
Wikipedia article Saint Benedict's Monastery (St. Joseph, Minnesota), CC BY-SA 4.0.

One of 36 National Register listings published here for Stearns County · listed in 1989 · category: District.

Sources: the Wikipedia article · the case file at the National Archives · the National Register database, National Park Service · the Wikipedia article

The listing

Address. College Ave. and Minnesota St., St. Joseph, 56374
When was it listed? March 1989
Category. district
City. St. Joseph city
National Register reference number. 89000160 - the number the National Park Service assigned this property when it was listed, and the key its nomination file is catalogued under at the National Archives.

The ground it stands on

4,786 words

The chapter on St. Joseph City in History of Stearns County, Minnesota, published 1915 names St. Joseph. This is what it says, exactly as the scans read.

St. Joseph was one of the first settled towns in the county. In 1854, two settlements were made, one in the vicinity of the present village of St. Joseph, by some German families, and the other on the east side of Sauk river, in the southeast corner of the town, by Americans.

Passage source: History of Stearns County, Minnesota, published 1915.

In 1856 Andrew Schroeder and family, Fred Schroeder and family, consisting of his wife and daughter, Elisabeth (later Mrs. Geo. Gruber), William, Mary and Fred, the latter three still living, came from Newark, New Jersey, and bought out Math. Huff, whose claim was big enough for two. It is now the farms of John Schroeder and John Mertes.. Mrs. Fred Schroeder, the wife of the elder Fred Schroeder, died in June of the same year, which was the first death at St. Joseph. During the same year M. J. Pung and family, John Gross and wife. Math. Braun and family, Peter Heinen and family, and Godhard Heinen and family came from Wisconsin. They bought the claims of Mike Lauermann, Jacob Thielen and Nicholas Kraus, who had claimed nearly the whole prairie east from St. Joseph. As the land had not been surveyed by the government, many of the claims were large enough for two.

Passage source: History of Stearns County, Minnesota, published 1915.

Machine-read from a century-old scan, so expect the errors a machine makes: misspelled names, dropped words, stray characters.

Read the whole chapter on St. Joseph City - 4,786 words on its settlement, mills, schools and churches.

Fires near this property

4 since 1999

Regional context, not property-specific evidence. The federal wildfire occurrence database lists 4 fires within 5 miles of St. Benedict's Convent and College Historic District between 1999 and 2020, burning about 270 acres in total. None started naturally. None was recorded as arson. Distance is straight-line from the map coordinates, so a fire counted here may appear on a neighbouring settlement's page as well.

Reported cause	Fires
Debris and open burning	3
Smoking	1

The most recent of them, most recent first, with the day each was reported and the service that recorded it.

Date	Cause	Size	Reported by	Name on the report
19 May 1999	Debris and open burning	under an acre	Minnesota Department of Natural Resources	not named
6 November 2020	Debris and open burning	260 acres	Minnesota Department of Natural Resources	not named
11 October 2000	Smoking	10 acres	Minnesota Department of Natural Resources	not named
1 January 2000	Debris and open burning	under an acre	Minnesota Department of Natural Resources	not named

Every fire recorded in Stearns County

Mines and quarries near this property

4 within 5 miles

Regional context, not property-specific evidence. The federal mineral resources record lists 4 workings within 5 miles of St. Benedict's Convent and College Historic District: 4 producers. All of them still produce. What was taken out: Granite, Sand and Gravel, Construction, Stone, Crushed/Broken. Distance is straight-line from the map coordinates, so a quarry counted here may appear on a neighbouring settlement's page as well.

Site	Commodity	Status
J L Shiely Co Quarry & Mill	Stone, Crushed/Broken	Producer
Stommes Stearns County Sand & Grave	Sand and Gravel, Construction	Producer
Crystal Gray Quarry	Granite	Producer
Diamond Pink Quarry	Granite	Producer

Every working recorded in Stearns County

Map coverage status

No historic map-sheet match is published for this property yet. That does not mean no map exists. This record needs a coordinate-quality review before it can be joined to a sheet boundary. Browse the county's mapped places while that work is pending.

Listed places nearby

6 within 8 miles

Other National Register properties close enough to walk or drive between, ordered by distance from this one. Both positions come from the same geocoding pass that matched these properties to their map sheets.

Property	Distance	Listed
Church of St. Joseph-Catholic	under 500 feet	1982
First State Bank	0.1 miles	1982
St. John's Abbey and University Historic District	3.9 miles	1979
St. Cloud Veterans Administration Hospital Historic District	5.2 miles	2012
Pan Motor Company Office and Sheet Metal Works	5.8 miles	1984
Clark and McCormack Quarry and House	6.2 miles	1982

Sources for this property

National Archives record	The nomination case file for reference 89000160 in Record Group 79.
Wikipedia article	Community-written account of this property, licensed CC BY-SA.
Stearns County	All 36 listed properties in this county.

Provenance

Listing record. National Park Service National Register of Historic Places, listed-properties dataset, current to 2026-05-22.
Map join. Address geocoded through the United States Census geocoder, then tested against the published boundary of every sheet in the USGS Historical Topographic Map Collection.
How this page is made. Listing fields come from federal records; map-sheet coverage is a labelled coordinate-to-boundary calculation, not a source-field claim.
Wildfire. Short, Karen C. 2022. Spatial wildfire occurrence data for the United States, 1992-2020 [FPA_FOD_20221014]. 6th Edition. Fort Collins, CO: Forest Service Research Data Archive. https://doi.org/10.2737/RDS-2013-0009.6 Collected with United States Government funding and usable without additional permissions or fees.
Mines and quarries. USGS Mineral Resources Data System (MRDS) https://mrdata.usgs.gov/mrds/ A work of the United States government, no copyright under 17 U.S.C. 105.