[5] It claims to be "The Gateway to Lake Wobegon", the fictional central Minnesota town created by author Garrison Keillor.

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 Indians in central Minnesota, published a series of articles in 1851 in German Catholic newspapers advocating Catholic settlement in central Minnesota.

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.

Alex D. MacDonald for the book Mabou Pioneers, one elderly Holdingford settler recalled, "As I look back, I can remember they were a jolly group of people, and when all their children were born, they made quite a gathering when they were all together at parties in their different homes, with singing of Scottish songs, violin music, and of course, dancing Scottish reels.

"[10] The Highland Scottish dancing at local ceilidhs was often "a source of scandal" to their Steans County German neighbors.

Vincent Yzermans often heard the famous lines from the Canadian Boat Song quoted in later years by the descendants of the Holdingford Scottish-Americans who had stayed, As the Holdingford area is traditionally ethnically polarized between German- and Polish-Americans, who until assimilation lessened the mutual distrust, attended different Catholic parishes and only rarely intermarried.

During the 1880s and '90s,[11] a small farming colony of Slovaks and Rusyns migrated from the Austro-Hungarian Empire via Pennsylvania, and then settled on homesteads to the northeast of Holdingford.

[15][16] During the 1920s and '30s, the Russian Orthodox priests from Holdingford sometimes made missionary visits to the Rusyn Americans living in a similar farming settlement in Browerville, Minnesota.

[13] Writing in 1997, Marilyn J. Chiat, described the empty church as, "a small white Gothic Revival building crowned with a tin onion dome, a rare sight on the edge of a cornfield in Minnesota.

He also became very well known locally in the decades before his death as a highly intelligent German-language essayist on religious and philosophical topics and a regular contributor to Der Nordstern.

In November 1917, the largely German-American parish of St. Mary's heard a "very impressive sermon" on American patriotism by Fr.

America's Independence Day 1918 was understandingly the largest ever seen in Holdingford, beginning with a Requiem Mass at St. Hedwig's Church for the fallen soldiers of all the Allied Armies, followed by a dinner served at noon by the women of the parish.

Five Holdingford-area Doughboys lost their lives while serving in the American Expeditionary Forces (AEF), Private Nicholas Heinz, who died on 13 September 1918 from wounds received in the 2 September capture of a German machine gun nest near Vilcey-sur-Trey, for which he was posthumously awarded the Distinguished Service Cross; Ernest Roehrs, who died of the influenza on Sept. 29, 1918 at Camp Funston, Kansas; Gregor Hartung, who was killed in action on France in October 1918; John Elkanic who was killed in action on 22 October 1918 and buried in the Oise-Aisne American Cemetery and Memorial; and Private Francis Feia who was killed in action on the fall of 1918 and whose Polish-American parents only received definitive word of his death on 12 July 1919.

[24][25] According to historian Elaine Davis, this was because organized crime figures from the Twin Cities, Chicago, and Kansas City, made frequent trips to the Holdingford area to purchase Minnesota 13; a very high quality moonshine distilled locally by Polish- and German-American farmers with the collusion of corrupt local politicians and law enforcement.

Vincent A Yzermans, during the Prohibition era, "a popular little ditty was being sung and hummed along the highways and byways of Holding Township": In June 1933, Clarence Olson, alias Tuffy, a bootlegger and gangster based in Eagle Bend, Minnesota who, according to The Long Prairie Leader, "has long had a reputation as a liquor runner and hijacker and who has been claimed by many to be the toughest man between Minneapolis and Duluth", met his destiny in a Holdingford area gunfight.

Then, however, Tuffy Olson and his enforcer Harley Buchan drew their sidearms and announced that they intended to take to 85 gallons of moonshine for free.

Following an investigation by the Stearns and Todd County Sheriff's Departments, Tuffy's two surviving enforcers and the Dzierweczynski brothers were both arrested pending criminal charges.

[29] According to the Long Prairie Leader, "Tuffy Olson has for years had a reputation of being a booze runner who has had many conflicts with the law.

At the time of his death, a Federal charge of illegal possession of liquor was hanging over his head, the trial being scheduled for later in the year.

On New Years Day 1945, Clarence Scepaniak, was a paratrooper serving in the European Theater with the 17th Airborne Division when he was taken prisoner by the enemy.

After being held as a POW in conditions that traumatized him for the rest of his life at Stalag IV-B, Scepaniak was liberated and returned him to Holdingford.

[31] In July 2017, the remains of United States Navy Fireman First Class Elmer Kerestes, a Holdingford native who was killed in action aboard the U.S.S.

Oklahoma during the attack on Pearl Harbor, were posthumously identified through DNA testing by the Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency and returned to his family for burial.

Kerestes' whole 25-mile funeral route from Melrose to Holdingford was lined with local people who wished to pay their respects as his American flag-draped casket passed by.