She pays tribute to Father Florian Fairbanks who served the parish in 1997 for twenty-nine years. Elfreda provides a good history of the church focusing on the Germans from Russia including valuable photos and documents reprinted. His wife Anna Marie was 104. A history of the church, school and the town of St. Anthony, North Dakota, from 1897 to present is chronicled in this informative and easy to read book. The first 250 pages offer a historical summary on this German-Russian community, discussing aspects of life in a small rural Catholic North Dakota town.
Photographs are one of the highlights of the book.
The last half of the book takes a look at the parish families with their accompanying stories. Here one finds family names including Babel, Bender, Berger, Boehm, Bullinger, Fleck, Gangl, Gustin, Helbling, Klein, Knoll, Lauinger, Leingang, Miller, Reisenauer, Renner, Ressler, Schaff, Schmidt, Steckler, Volk, Weigel, Wetsch, Zander and Ziniel. There were eight children born to Matthew and Elisabeth Renner. She married Lawrence Welk in 1931. One finds old-fashioned recipes for Plachinka, Hulptzie, Borsch, Fleihkuckla, Zukerkuchen, Kolace and Schopffnoodle.