Little church on the prairie: Remote Broadview parish still going

Our Lady of the Assumption Church, west of Broadview, sits tiny against the broad swath of farmland and endless blue sky, as it did when it opened 101 years ago.

It looks better now than it did back then. A photo taken the day the first Mass was held in 1913 shows wooden posts propped up the unfinished steeple.

Scaffolding covered the front of the building, and the wood exterior was bare of paint. Now the clapboard structure is covered in gleaming white paint, and the interior is restored, thanks to the hard work of volunteers.

One of them is Pat Frey, whose family lived in a house next door to Our Lady of the Assumption. The church has been part of her family history even longer.

I grew up across the pigpen from the church, Frey said, sitting in the dining room of her Broadview home. My dads aunt and uncle donated the land where the church sits, and there were lots of families involved at that time.

Barney and Georgiana Gotken donated the three acres from their homestead, which sits about nine miles west of Broadview. The parish probably began in 1907 or 1908, Frey said, before the church was built.

There were farmers in that area that wanted this church started and they all got together, Frey said.

Her father, Alvan Stiles, helped with the upkeep of the church, and the cemetery down the hill from the church.

The cemetery land was donated by the Newton family, she said.

These days, gravestones are scattered in the sparse field, some decorated with plastic flowers.

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Little church on the prairie: Remote Broadview parish still going