Post by Michael Lee Rengel II

Father Francis Xavier Pierz is the one who wrote for the Catholic newspaper Der Wahrheitsfreund — “The Friend of Truth” — in the 1850s. He was a Slovenian missionary priest working in central Minnesota. He sent glowing letters to that German-language paper in Cincinnati, describing Minnesota’s great land, climate, and opportunities to attract German Catholic settlers. His writings helped spark the big wave of German immigration into Stearns County and the area around St. Cloud starting in 1854–55. He wasn’t running the printing press himself — that was back in Cincinnati — but he was the one sending the messages that got published there. This lines up with the time you were asking about.