I was raised in a small town. Not the fifteen-thousand-person small town (Seymour, Indiana) that John Mellencamp sang about: I’m talking really, really small. Nestled near the eastern shore of Lake Winnebago in northeast Wisconsin is a region called the “Holyland.” It is known for its agricultural landscapes and Roman Catholic churches that serve as the focal points for each close-knit, unincorporated community.
Map of the “Holyland.”
How small are these communities? One of the towns, St. Joe, put up a hand-made sign near the town limit that said “Population: Not Many.” In response, the neighboring town of St. Cloud put up its own sign that joked, “Population: More Than St. Joe.” To say there are more cows than people in the Holyland would not be an understatement. If you ask a “Holylander” if their community has all that it needs, they would likely respond, “Yes, there’s a church, a supper club, and a bar,” though maybe not in that order.
I moved to the Holyland in middle school, and I have long respected the region’s humility and deep connection to its past. At the same time, being raised as an adoptive member of the area allowed me to question the romanticized vision retold at community events. Like many rural places, residents tend to overlook the ways in which their communities are closely intertwined with the broader country. That interconnectedness also is the cause of many of the current challenges plaguing the region. Nonetheless, the Holyland is a special place and its three pillars: faith, farming, and family have allowed the region to survive and chart a path forward for preserving its rich history.
As its name suggests, faith is the bedrock of the Holyland. Throughout the mid-nineteenth century, Catholic German immigrants came to the region in large numbers as they left dire economic conditions in Prussia.1 Through chain migration friends and families followed their loved ones across the Atlantic and settled in eastern Wisconsin. At their second settlement, Johnsburg (my home town), the newly arrived created St. John the Baptist Church, which served as the centerpiece of the community. By 1870, subsequent immigrants formed other communities named after Catholic saints or biblical places such as Charlesburg, Jericho, Marytown, Mount Calvary, St. Anna, St. Cloud, and St. Peter.
St. John the Baptist Church in Johnsburg, Wisconsin in the early 1900s. Photo Credit: Malone Area Heritage Museum.
As time wore on, large Catholic families swelled church memberships. Each community formed its own parochial school to ensure strong religious education for the next generation. By the mid-twentieth century, however, decline in memberships and reduced funding forced some schools to close, which gave rise to the Consolidated Parochial Elementary School system. As an alumnus, I can attest that the larger class sizes and consolidation of resources was not the result of a decline in faith across the Holyland. Instead, the region experienced economic changes that reverberate through the communities to this day.
Farming provided financial stability to the Holyland. Community members point to their farming roots as proof of their independence from the hustle and bustle of the rest of the country, but that is a viewpoint in need of nuance. In his 2023 book, Lies of the Land: Seeing Rural America for What It Is–And Isn’t, Steve Conn, history professor at Miami University (OH), cast aside the rural-urban dichotomy and argued that communities should instead be viewed as either densely populated or less densely populated.2 This distinction is crucial because instead of viewing rural and urban places as separate systems we can assess how interconnected regions around the United States are to one another as well as connected to an increasingly global economy.
View of Johnsburg, Wisconsin in the early 1900s. Notice how the church towers over the small farming community. Photo Credit: Malone Area Heritage Museum.
This kind of interconnectedness certainly applies to the Holyland, even if residents do not admit it. For instance, the expansion of railroads like the Sheboygan-Fond Du Lac line that bisects the Holyland made successful farming communities feasible as products could be sold not just locally but to national and international markets. During the Great Depression, New Deals programs propped up area farmers from sinking into the depths of economic ruin. Local farmers have long been connected to a much larger capitalist system.
That interconnectedness also proved to be the greatest threat to the small-scale farmers of the area. The 1980s U.S. farm crisis tore through farming communities across the Midwest, and the Holyland was a microcosm of the challenges and pain felt elsewhere.3 In 1986, Rev. Bernard Sippel, a local priest, led a meeting at St. Michael’s Parish in Dotyville on the southern edge of the Holyland. The meeting brought together local farmers and community members “in the hope of bringing some relief to the financially-hurting rural area.”4 Holyland residents held other meetings throughout the decade as small-scale farmers tried to weather the crisis.5
Even as economic conditions improved in the late 1980s, the damage had been done. To make matters worse, agriculture leaders like Ben Skaar, general manager of Agri-Land Co-op which operated out of the area glossed over the damage. “While there were many downsides to the farm crisis,” Skarr told reporters in 1990, “like most everything in life, nothing is ever as good or as bad as it seems…. Those farmers who experienced the hard times of the farm crisis and survived are all better managers today because of it.”6 What about the farmers that did not survive the crisis? Across the Midwest and in rural areas like the Holyland the size of dairy herds declined, the number of full-time farmers fell fast, and big agribusinesses became even larger, which squeezed out smaller farms.7
In 2003, consolidation of agriculture arrived in the Holyland when construction began on Lake Breeze Dairy, a large dairy farm that milked 1500 cows when it launched and grew to over 3000 cows by 2012. The operation met fierce resistance by local farmers who attempted to stop construction of the farm through a lawsuit. Other opponents such as Fond du Lac County Supervisor Wilmer Abitz opposed the construction because he wanted the $650,000 grant given to Lake Breeze by the County to help with upstart construction costs go towards helping small family farmers instead.8 As Lake Breeze succeeded, farmers either consolidated themselves or left farming altogether.
Despite its challenges, the Holyland has not lost faith or abandoned its memories of life prior to the farm crisis. In 2008, a small group of residents formed the Malone Area Heritage Museum (MAHM) to preserve the history of the Holyland.9 The museum is a testament to the region’s interconnectedness. One of its buildings is the former train depot of the community, and the museum sits across the street from a Agri-Land Co-op facility, whose general manager brushed aside the farm crisis’ impact on local farmers.
Former Sheboygan-Fond du Lac Railroad depot at the Malone Area Heritage Museum. Photo Credit: Malone Area Heritage Museum.
Inside, the MAHM houses a rich collection of artifacts, maps, photos, and genealogy material. In many ways the museum is a lifeline for local history and keeps the Holyland’s stories alive for the next generation. If you attend one MAHM’s public events throughout the year, it becomes immediately clear the positive impact the museum has on the area. For example, the museum held its seventeenth annual summer social this past August, and it hosts an “Old-Fashioned Country Breakfast” event for multiple generations of families to come together and experience food “just how grandma used to make it.”
At the same time, places like the MAHM are vital resources for historians and scholars, professional and amateur alike, who are looking for ways to enrich their work with stories from the ground up. If you want to learn about small towns like those found in the Holyland, all you need to do is ask. I know there are plenty of residents eager to share their stories and talk your ear off—probably while drinking an old fashioned at the nearest supper club.
- M. Beth Schlemper, “Borders of the Holyland of East-Central Wisconsin,” in Wisconsin Germans Land and Life, eds H. Bungert, C. L. Kluge, & R. C. Ostergren (Madison, Wisconsin: University of Wisconsin Press, 2006), 189–205.
- Steve Conn, Lies of the Land: Seeing Rural America for What It Is–And Isn’t, (University of Chicago Press, 2023)
- In the 1980s, the Farm Crisis swept across the United States as commodity prices fell and interest rates for borrowing increased. These two primary factors led to a spiral of debt for farmers who struggled to dig themselves out from, even as the federal government attempted to alleviate the problem through the 1985 Farm Bill. In Iowa for example, one in four farms closed for good by 1989. For more context into the ramifications of the Farm Crisis, see Pamela Riney-Kehrberg, When a Dream Dies: Agriculture, Iowa,and the Farm Crisis of the 1980s (University Press of Kansas, 2022).
- “Farm crisis is topic of Monday meeting,” The Reporter, Fond du Lac, Wisconsin, July 20, 1986.
- “Calumet issues forum focuses on farm crisis,” The Reporter, Fond du Lac, Wisconsin, September 28, 1986.
- “Agri-land Co-op rebounds; good year for farmers predicted in ’90,” The Reporter, Fond du Lac, Wisconsin, January 10, 1990.
- Small farms, rural economy are in crisis,” The Reporter, Fond du Lac, Wisconsin, July 11, 1999.
- “Huge area dairy farm is closer to reality,” The Reporter, Fond du Lac, Wisconsin, February 12, 2003. Relations with Lake Breeze remain tense at times. In 2014, a 50,000-gallon manure leak from Breeze Lake concerned local residents. “Water tests continue following manure spill,” The Reporter, Fond du Lac, Wisconsin, June 17, 2014.
- The Malone Area Heritage Museum is located at N8791 County Rd W Malone, WI 53049.
