Wieland said when his grandfather was 7 years old, circa 1904, he’d grab the church bell rope and ring that thing for all it was worth.

Up front, beside the altar, is a near life-size statue of St. Henry that a parishioner carved long ago from a log fetched from the woods out back, and in the basement hand-hewn logs are still in place.

Church origins date back to 1852, when eight families from the mountainous Canton Grissons in Switzerland settled on a piece of high ground just west of what became Le Center.

They came to a new country to get what their native land couldn’t provide — fertile ground. The Swiss mountains were nice, church old-timers said, but you can’t eat scenery.

Crude log cabins sprang up and the settlers, plying a language called Romancha, built themselves a church in 1859. Theirs was the first, and last, Romancha settlement in the United States.

In the cemetery beside the church lie the remains of parishioners, including several priests, two Civil War veterans, and the infant Wenzin twins — Leonal and Anthony — who died within days of each other in 1888.

St. Henry’s now, as then, is bounded by cropland and a whole lot of quiet. While showing some visitors around the other day, Germscheid grabbed the bell rope and gave it a few yanks.

In the old days, the pastor would sound the bell to let field hands know he’d arrived at the church to hear confessions.

Now its use is ceremonial — clarion ringing to announce worship services, somber tolling for funerals.

According to church lore, the 1,000-pound bell was hoisted into place by schoolchildren in 1876, but Wieland doesn’t buy it.

“I think that’s just ‘romance,’” he said.