Economics Commons^™

The Virgin And The Grasshoppers: Persistence And Piety In German-Catholic America, Stephen Gross

Faculty Working Papers

This paper examines two inter-related historical problems -- the impact of the market revolution in nineteenth-century American and the disruptive impact of immigration on community life -- by chronicling the construction of a votive chapel in the heavily German-Catholic Stearns County, Minnesota. The chapel, dedicated to the Virgin Mary, was ostensibly built to secure divine relief from a plague of Rocky Mountain locusts that was devastating the area. At the same time, the chapel and the rituals surrounding its construction spoke to other community needs and functioned in diverse ways to address other community problems. For one, the shrine spoke …