When driving around rural Minnesota one tends to see a variety of quaint, charming, and small, usually white, wooden churches dotting the countryside. Recently, on a Sunday afternoon drive in southern MN, we came across an unusual country church. But, it was the name of the “area” that first caught our attention…Litomysl.
Following the arrow directing us to Litomysl, we turned off the “main” rural road and there stood a beautiful, stone church.
It was picturesque and well kept, with a parsonage next door and even a school a bit farther east of the parsonage. How curious! There was one farm across the road and that was it. There were no other buildings in sight, only cornfields. The church, parsonage, school and one farm made up the current “unincorporated community” of Litomysl. We didn’t even know how to pronounce the name, or what nationality it would be.
We enjoyed looking around the church yard, and taking pictures and wondering about the history. We concluded it must have replaced an earlier church, and that was, indeed, what happened. Once back home, we got on the internet and found some information.
Litomysl is a town in former Czechoslovakia. When Bohemian descendants arrived in Minnesota, near this present day Holy Trinity Church, they named their new settlement Litomysl.
The people originally built a small, wooden church in 1878 and it was called Slovanik Bohemian Church.
In 1884 they changed the name to The Church of the Most Holy Trinity.
In 1898 the parish got its first resident pastor, and a parsonage was built next to the church.
The stone church is unique because it was made of stone donated by the parishioners, using their own field stones. Each family would donate 6 loads of field rock for the building of the church. Stone masons were hired to build the church. It was finished in 1941.
In 1957 the church built a school and named it St. Isidore School. St. Isidore is the patron saint of farmers. The school closed in 2015.
Surprisingly, the parish is very active to this day. It seems so remote, standing alone in the cornfields, but people come from the surrounding communities. There was a poster taped to the door announcing their annual summer festival, every July. It might be fun to attend sometime.
Here is a link to a short history of Litomysl and Holy Trinity Church.