The little town of Erin Prairie is as Irish as the Midwest gets, with those two Wisconsin staples making up the bulk of what’s in town, an ethnic-based pub and the numerous Irish Catholic churchgoers (see its frontlawn tomb image at left) from just up the road who have historically been the vast majority of its typically each Sunday afternoon, regular patrons. The church census lists only a wee amount fewer people than the town itself.
But just on the very eve of St. Patrick’s Day, metamorphically speaking, all that took a historically strange turn like an old and narrow and winding Ireland road. Even St. Patrick, though he could be the ultimate snake charmer and get them out of the isles, could not save the day. An old Irish institution waned for a time, as the decades-long pub as a social club has now become even more of a history, right before the Irish are famously out and about, so they were unable to milk more money out of what would normally be a large pot of Guinness and green-beer gold. That will likely raise the ire of those who are now crying in their beer, most of them parishioners at what’s fitting named St. Patrick’s. Mere days before what’s become the Irish national holiday, if only as celebrated not in the Irish State but in The States, the online data that pops up front and center said this to try to clear up the status of the tavern, known at Mary’s Erin Corners: Closed. But that was an online mistake! It had a few months back gained new owners, following in those big green footsteps of the old-time parishioner who started the place decades ago, from a business team that also runs a tavern across-county in Hammond. They would now call the place The Bases Loaded Bar, as there is an adjacent ballfield.
Still, Erin Prairie goes back in time as far as the arrival of Europeans in the Badger State, like Milwaukee and its non-green beer, even though on the Wisconsin’s far west end, so a few hundred miles of added travel was involved for the immigrants, unless they would take the long portage from Lake Superior to the point where it nearly connects with the at-that-point-narrow St. Croix River. That is what gave birth to Erin Prairie and the nearby towns, via the looming lumber industry floating logs down the now-large river (more on that below). Thereby, its only church and sole Irish pub would soon co-mingle.
The history, too, starts with the local town hall, about the only other thing to be found in Erin Prairie. The small hall looks like many back in the historic day, relatively small and cube shaped with a second story, and much like an old country church. The hall thus resembles that in another town a few miles west, that of Richmond.
Many of the Irish descendants of those who settled Erin Prairie still worship here. The longtime companion pub had been shifted to be called the Bases Loaded Saloon, and the new owners had pledged to keep up all those local traditions that had sprung from being Irish Catholic. A goal had been to be open for business on a more consistent basis, with expanded hours, and also bring in live music that was purposely planned to have varying styles, including on Sunday afternoons such as St. Patrick’s Day was, they say.
The old, original church cemetery is dozens of times larger, compared to the church building itself, and is surrounded by small woodlots, an old farmhouse and a bigger and more modern farm. Wood hewn signs propped up on poles greet visitors. Spectators at the pub’s adjoining ballfield still can use a series of bleachers made solely of wooden logs, and a small press box built of the same. The pub’s ceiling, also, was all log-made.
Music at the church, true to form, has long been provided by the Erin Prairie Folk Group, John and Maureen Brunner, and Heather Bolton and Marie Helgersen. The names are noteworthy, for reasons of ethnicity.
Bolton family history, is a name of Anglo-Saxon descent spreading to the Celtic countries of Ireland, Scotland and Wales in early times and is found in many medieval manuscripts throughout the above islands. The Helgersen surname, depending on which of its six derivatives, also has an Irish lilt.
Deacons have been Michael Germain and Mel Riel. Historically, such surnames evolved as a way to sort people into groups — by occupation, place of origin, clan affiliation, patronage, parentage, adoption and even physical characteristics like red hair. Many of these modern surnames, like the deacons, in the dictionary can be traced back to Britain and Ireland. Historically, Jean-Baptiste Riel was apparently born in about 1650 in “St Pierre,” Limerick, taken to be St. Peters, lineage online records indicate.
Only three Minnesota cities across the way, for comparison, are above 20 percent Irish and almost all are small in population. At last measure, it’s at 15.2 percent Irish in Erin Prairie, among the 700-plus residents in town. Irish lineage averages at 3.6 percent across the state as a whole.
Several employees from Immaculate Conception in New Richmond, on the other side of that community about ten miles away from Erin Prairie, and has a joint main pastor in Fr. John Anderson — and he knew about the pub right off the bat — have noted that many parishioners have frequented there, making it in that way a true Ireland-style community pub. The former owners also were well-known to be local parishioners, it was verified.
There are many transportation dynamics in the formation of the town. Erin Prairie is a rural, agricultural community located approximately 45 miles from the Twin Cities.
As a piece of historical trivia about the area bars, Rooster’s Roadhouse (formerly Fatt Matt’s Bar & Grill and long before that the Red Rooster) is located near the railroad tracks in what is often called Jewitt Mills. This is a town where, with its founders, the streets were plotted and plans made for development but because of changes in the east-west railroad, that in large part fed off the lumbering that was a area chief employer, before the turn of the century (twice now) the larger-scale development never came. Jewitt is the name for a founder who actively worked with the lumbering industry on the St. Croix and Chippewa rivers, bookends to Erin Prairie, floating logs by the thousands southward, to the point of obscuring sight of the wide waters.