Summary: Frogtown began to be settled as early as the 1860s when French Canadians first moved into the area. Although they were quickly subsumed by other immigrant groups, particularly Germans, their presence can still be seen in street names.
Body: The Very Reverend Alexius Hoffmann O.S.B., was born in St. Paul in 1863 and at the age of four moved into the neighborhood known at that time by German immigrants who lived there as Froschenburg, or Frogtown. In an unpublished memoir, he wrote in 1935, titled “Frogtown: 1867-1875,” Father Hoffmann recollects that it was the neighborhood’s German settlers who gave it that name. He claims the Germans were not “frog fanciers nor frog-eaters … Froschenburg is meant to mean a burg or borough inhabited by frogs, jumping, trilling frogs” (p. 11). He recalls that the area was a swamp overrun with frogs and froglets “domiciled in the pools, puddles, and mud.” The name, he claims, had nothing to do with the first settlers in the area who were French Canadians, but rather, as Bishop John Ireland observed as well when visiting Calvary Cemetery, referred to the large population of frogs whose croaking could be heard throughout the neighborhood. We’ll leave it at that, although the neighborhood has also been called “Thomas Dale,” which to some appears to be more dignified than Frogtown. Father Hoffmann died in St. John's Abbey in 1940. The neighborhood is located northwest of downtown St. Paul. It is bounded to the west by Lexington Parkway, to the east by Interstate 35E, to the south by University Avenue and a one-block section of Aurora Avenue, and to the north by the railroad tracks. Frogtown began to be settled as early as the 1860s when French Canadians first moved into the area. Although they were quickly subsumed by other immigrant groups, particularly Germans, their presence can still be seen in street names, such as Lafond Avenue named after an early French landowner, Benjamin Lafond. Father Hoffmann in a chapter titled “A Dissertation of the Culture of Frogtown” notes “When you are told that most of the Frogtowners were immigrants, representatives of different nationalities – Yankees from New England, Germans from Bavaria, Prussia, Pomerania, Bohemias, Austrians, Poles, Canadians and Irish you will understand the problems of their living together were those of adjusting themselves to one another.” All were vying for jobs in railroad shops and related industries that were being established nearby. Workers' houses were constructed on small, narrow lots, at times with two on a lot, one in the front, another squeezed in back on the alley. While their houses may have been small, families found refuge in the magnificent churches that were built in the neighborhood, including the most visible of them all, St. Agnes Roman Catholic Church which is second only to the St. Paul Cathedral in its monumentality and grandeur.