The Frogtown Neighborhood of St. Paul

The first German Bohemians came to St. Paul in the early 1870s and settled in the German ethnic neighborhoods that ring the downtown area of the city and joined the downtown German Catholic parish of the Assumption. 

Church of the Assumption St. Paul

Their Czech neighbors from the old country were also their neighbors in the new country.

"Nearly all ethnic German parishes is St. Paul, Minnesota, held Bohmisch families, including St. Agnes, St Francis de Sales (near the Czech community centered at St. Stanislaus along West Seventh Street) St. Bernard's (Rice Street) Sacred Heart (Dayton's Bluff) and St. Matthew's (West Side)"

" The largest concentration of German-Bohemians in St. Paul was in the Frogtown neighborhood just north of the downtown business district.  

                                                  Map of the Frogtown area of Saint Paul

These German Bohemians immigrated from small villages in the forested areas of Southwest Bohemia , the Böhmerwald (Sumava).  There were many from the small village of Glockelberg (Zad Zavonka).  The neighborhood was called Frogtown or Froshbberg by the German-speaking immigrants who populated the neighborhood, 

because of the large number of frogs that inhabited this marshy area of the city."

  "This immigrant neighborhood was centered on the beautiful church of St. Agnes.

                                               Recent photo of St. Agnus Catholic Church

 

German-language sermons, hymns and confessions lingered well into the 1950s.   Social events often centered around churches, card clubs, men's clubs, women's clubs, sewing circles, sauerkraut suppers and booyas..."  German was the language of the home and the street.  "The local business establishments, taverns, grocery stores, bakeries, butcher shops, hardware stores, tailor shops, barber shops, pharmacies and mortuaries displayed the German names of their German proprietors on their marquees."

Today, Frogtown is considered a subsection of the Thomas-Dale neighborhood.  It is bordered by University Avenue on the south, the Burlington Northern Railroad tracks to the north, Lexington Parkway on the west and Highway 35 E on the east.   More information here,       "Frogtown or Thomas Dale". Ramsey County Historical Society.  2008-07-22

 

Bob Paulson and Shan Thomas at the Minnesota Historical Society

                

                                                                                   

We know that Robert Paulson, founder of, and Research Committee chair of the German-Bohemian Heritage Society (GBHS) has been doing research on German-Bohemians in the Frogtown area.

 

A 2005 article written by Paulson and Linda Therkelsen in Heimatbrief  states that  "The church records of St. Agnes are laced with German-Bohemian names. " ... Paulson says "I discovered from the Catholic Church records of St. Agnes Parish in St. Paul, Minnesota, that a large group of emigrants from Kreis Krummau, Kaplitz, Budweis and Prachatitz also settled in that parish during the last half of the 19th century."  Some of the St. Agnes parishioners  joined St. Bernard's when it was founded in 1890 on the Eastern edge of Frogtown.

One of the few books on Frogtown is the book by Alex Leibel titled In Those Days, Recollections of Frogtown.  The book "traces ... misadventures of a young boy born to German immigrants in a small section of St. Paul...

 The memoirs are primarily of the 1930s and 40s during a period the author refers to as the golden age of Frogtown. It was an era when the immigrants were settled in and raising their large families beneath the sheltering baroque steeple of their Catholic church, their focal point sustaining them in that historic time with its two epoch events, the Great Depression and World War II." [from the synopsis provided by the publisher]  

I did find a Facebook listing for Frogtown and through it found some entries from Dorothy Paulson,  wife of Robert Paulson.


She grew up in the area, attended St. Agnes Catholic Church and St. Agnes Schools through high school.   According to Dorothy Paulson, "The three Catholic churches in Frogtown formed a sort of triumvirate: Saint Agnes was German; Saint Adalbert's was Polish; and Saint Vincent's was considered the Irish parish."

                                         Street View ca. 1930 of St. Agnus Catholic Church