 This enabled them to weather the cyclical nature of farm revenue and create a prosperous hybrid rural-manufacturing economy.Maria Stein has remained almost entirely a farm-based community because of its lack of a canal or railroad to transport manufactured goods to market, whereas surrounding communities, Minster, New Bremen, Celina and St. Marys had either railways or the canal and as a result developed robust manufacturing businesses.Perhaps the defining feature of this rural community is its Roman Catholicism.