Albany, Minnesota

Albany is deep in the heart of Stearns County, one of the most heavily German Catholic regions in the entire United States. The first settlers here, the Obermiller and Schwinghammer families, arrived in eighteen sixty-two. Albany was officially incorporated in eighteen ninety.

By nineteen thirteen, the town had grown ambitious enough to mount a campaign to shift the Stearns County seat here from Saint Cloud, citing Albany's more central location. The bid failed, but it speaks to how quickly this tidy German farming community had found its footing on the Minnesota prairie.