St. John’s Evangelical Lutheran Church at Bradford is primarily significant for its association with the German population of Isanti County.
St. John’s is a well preserved example of the small churches that have served Isanti County’s rural population throughout the county’s history. The Germans were among the earliest ethnic groups to settle Isanti County. Their presence has been overshadowed by the vast numbers of Swedish immigrants who followed them, but isolated German settlements survive in southwestern Isanti County and in the southeastern part of Bradford Township. The German Lutheran homesteaders of Bradford Township organized and built St. John’s in 1882. The congregation was never large, and during most of its history the church shared a pastor with the German Lutheran congregations at either Crown or Weber, the two other German settlements in the county. In 1956 the congregation closed the church to merge with the St. John’s Lutheran Church at Weber. The Isanti County Historical Society acquired the church building from the Weber congregation in 1973. St. John’s is representative of the many rural churches scattered across Isanti County which served the important function of binding together the small ethnic communities comprising the county’s rural population. The surviving churches record the concentration areas of the ethnic groups and denominations. The extremely well-preserved condition of St. John’s make it link with the county’s German immigrant population.
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