Historic Homes and Businesses in Carver - Carver County Historical ...

each) the bulk of the parcels that came to be today‟s St. Nicholas Church property.
Today St. Nicholas church owns all of Carver Block 44, as well as portions of Blocks 43,
45, 55, 56, and 57, as well as parts of platted vacated streets and alleys on Hickory, Ash,
and West Fifth Streets. In November 1911 the Franciscan Brotherhood transferred the
original Block 44 parcel to the church of St. Nicholas.
The church is built in a pinkish-orange brick in a rural European Gothic Revival style
with a trace of Greek Revival elements. In Aug. 1868 the brickdealing firm of Griggs &
Miller provided the brick and received the contract to build the church, which was to be
30‟ by 60‟ with an addition, at a cost of $4,000. Brickdealer Griggs is probably
Chauncey W. Griggs, who was active in the brickmaking business in Chaska in the
1860s. Brickdealer Miller is perhaps Frederick Miller, who in the 1860s had a Carver
brickyard and river barge business in partnership with Philip Reynolds. Or perhaps it
was Fritz Miller, who owned a Chaska brickyard until selling it to Lucien Warner in
1873. Griggs and Miller seem to have partnered up in the brickdealing business, perhaps
only for a short time in 1868 before Griggs went on to great fortune in St. Paul in the
lumber business, owning even a great mansion yet found there at 476 Summit Avenue.
The brick for St. Nicholas Church seems to have come from elsewhere, perhaps from
Shakopee, Minnesota. The architect for the church was Charles Bachman and the
building was constructed under the supervision of mason Marvin White. It features
Gothic arched windows and a three story shingled bell tower, also of Gothic influence,
that was added about 1880 through a generous gift by a parishoner, Genoveva Kimmel,
who lived at 420 Broadway in Carver. Also featured are attached exterior buttresses, a
full frieze, and broken pedimented gable ends.
Inside, the altar area occupies a half-octagonal extension to the east and the rising sun in
the age-old tradition of European parish churches. Stained glass windows donated by
parish benefactors or in memorium to parishoners surround the church, including one
from Genoveva Kimmel, who also provided the Stations of the Cross artwork and the two
side altars, dating to around 1905. Others whose names appear on the church‟s stained
glass windows: Frank Bachmeyer, George Knoblauch, John J. Farrell, Johann Riesgraf,
Simon Siegle and Henry Jacobs (jointly), Mathias Riesgraf, Adam Riesgraf, Mrs. John
(probably Afra Goldstein) Gestach, and the Kock family (probably the family of Priest
Bertrand Kock‟s, who served at St. Nicholas from 1952-1968).
The first St. Nicholas Cemetery, called St. Nikolas Cemetery, lies about a mile to the
west of the church along Jonathan Carver Parkway near Fourth Street West. Consecrated
in 1869, the cemetery land was donated by area farmer John Riesgraf and his wife
Katherine. John Reisgraf was born in Bavaria in the German States in Nov. 5, 1835 and
died Jan. 4, 1929. John Riesgraf immigrated to America in 1847 with his family and in
1861 married Katherine Mergen in Minneapolis, who was probably born in Prussia in the
German States on Sept. 29, 1836. In 1866 John and Katherine moved to a farm about a
mile west of downtown Carver. John and Katherine were charter members of the St.
Nicholas Catholic Church Parish in Carver and worked to maintain and build the
congregation. Besides donating the land for the first cemetery for St. Nicholas, they were
the first singers in the church. John Riesgraf was blind for the last fifty years of his long