St. Joseph in Rosemount’s current church was dedicated in 2003, 135 years after 10 founding families from the Rosemount and Lakeville areas gathered to dedicate the parish’s first, wood-frame church located between the two communities.

St. Joseph in Rosemount’s current church was dedicated in 2003, 135 years after 10 founding families from the Rosemount and Lakeville areas gathered to dedicate the parish’s first, wood-frame church located between the two communities. COURTESY FATHER PAUL KAMMEN

The 1868 founding of St. Joseph of Rosemount temporarily brought together Catholics from two towns, but another union still exists between members whose families came from European countries of different languages more than 1,000 miles apart.

“You have this kind of comingling of Irish and Germans, at a point even if you look at history when technically the two countries were at world wars. But they worked together and were supportive of one another,” said Father Paul Kammen, who has pastored the parish’s 2,000 households for six years.

Long before the parish’s founding, the first Mass in the area was celebrated in 1855, in the home of Michael and Mary Johnston near Crystal Lake in Fairfield (now Lakeville) by Father John McMahon, pastor at that time of Guardian Angels in Hastings, according to Gerald Mattson, who researched parish history. (Guardian Angels merged with St. Boniface in 1987 to become St. Elizabeth Ann Seton parish.)

About 10 founding families from Rosemount and Lakeville gathered for Mass when priests could come, until Father Anatole Oster brought the two missions together to build a wood frame church, dedicated in 1868. Parishioners from the two communities named the parish St. Joseph. But neither was fully pleased with the location, at what is now 160th Street, according to Mattson.

St. Joseph parish grew with Dakota County, and in 1876, parishioners from Lakeville left to found All Saints in Lakeville.

Four years after the split, a cyclone destroyed St. Joseph church, throwing its 1,200-pound bell and framing 150 feet. A second wood frame church was built near South Robert Trail and dedicated in 1881, Mattson wrote in his history.

St. Joseph parish built its third church, a Gothic-style brick structure, near the previous one in 1924. The afternoon of Christmas Eve, parishioners laid the still-unfinished church’s wood floor in time for Midnight Mass. The church was dedicated in 1925.

Father James Furey, who served the parish from 1938 until 1973, except for a short period, left a big impression on lifelong parishioner Richard Brand, 89.

“That was back in the day when no way were you going to miss Mass on Sunday,” he said. “Father Furey had it all figured out, how many hundreds of hours you have in a week, and you owe God one hour on Sunday, and he made sure church was one hour long.”

In 1952 Father Furey oversaw construction of the parish’s first school and convinced the Sisters of St. Agnes of Fond du Lac, Wisconsin, to teach there, Mattson wrote. After teaching from 1953 until 1985, the sisters moved into other ministries. The school now has a lay staff.

As the area’s population grew, four new parishes were founded around St. Joseph in Rosemount between 1965 and 1990. Current parish boundaries for St. Joseph extend to St. Thomas Becket in Eagan, St. Agatha in Rosemount and All Saints in Lakeville. They also extend to the Burnsville parishes of Risen Savior and Mary Mother of the Church and to St. John Neumann in Eagan, Father Kammen said.

In 2003, then-Auxiliary Bishop Richard Pates dedicated the parish’s current brick church, located a mile east of the former church at Biscayne Avenue and Connemara Trail. The previous church building was desacralized and is now used for senior and social events, he said.

In 2009, the parish opened a new school connected to the church building for about 225 students in grades K-8 and 50 in preschool.

A more than 100-year-old statue of St. Joseph stands in the church narthex, while a newer statue is in the sanctuary. The patron also appears in a stained-glass window.

St. Joseph is a silent witness watching over the Holy Family and all of us, Father Kammen said. “God works through a bunch of small actions, and you think, what did Joseph do, day in and day out, for the Holy Family? He just quietly watched over them, helping them to know it would be OK.”

Editor’s note: This is eighth story in a monthly series of 10 places in the Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis with connections to St. Joseph.