Centenary College and St. Dominic's Villa

The sisters who ran the villa belonged to the first Dominican community in Texas. Mother Mary Agnes Magevney brought twenty Sisters of St. Dominic to Galveston in 1882 at Bishop Nicholas A. Gallagher's request and opened Sacred Heart Academy. In 1887 they also opened Holy Rosary School, a free school for Black children. When academy parents threatened to withdraw their daughters unless Holy Rosary closed, the sisters refused, and both schools prospered. Mother Pauline Gannon later carried the order's schools into Central Texas.

What the plaque says

Centenary College and St. Dominic's Villa Centenary College Preparatory School, Lampasas' first coeducational college, was founded 1883 by the local Methodist Episcopal Church, on the centennial of the organization of Methodism in the United States. First president was The Rev. Marshall McIlhaney, at a salary of $125 per month. Two 3-story buildings comprised the plant. First-year enrollment was 174 and tuition was $25 per 5-month semester; Christmas break lasted 1-1/2 days. In 1894 the property was sold and classes moved to the vacant Park Hotel; when the hotel burned a year later, the college closed. St. Dominic's Villa, a Catholic boarding academy for girls of all faiths, opened in 1900 in the former Centenary College buildings. Under the able, spirited direction of the Dominican Sisters, it made progress for two decades. Its former students recalled their villa days as ones of "girlhood happiness". Sister Mary Catherine, director, and her dedicated staff developed an atmosphere of home-like contentment and high scholastic standards. The college had two 5-month semesters; to gain school days, Easter vacation was not observed. Peak enrollment of 70 was reached in the second year. Anti-Catholic activity of the "Ku Klux Klan" helped influence the villa to close, 1925. (1969)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Hancock Springs Park — 2.2 mi
  Lampasas's city park on Sulphur Creek, with a spring-fed swimming pool that holds about 69 degrees all year, the walls of the old bathhouse and a golf course.
• Colorado Bend State Park — 18 mi
  Old ranch country on the Colorado above Lake Buchanan, where a spring-fed creek drops 70 feet over fern-covered travertine at Gorman Falls.
• Inks Lake State Park — 26 mi
  A state park on a constant-level lake of the Colorado, between Buchanan and Inks dams, with pink granite and gneiss at the water and CCC work along Park Road 4.

More markers nearby

• Saint Mary's Catholic Church — 0.9 mi
• Thomas Pratt — 1.0 mi
• James S. Gillett — 1.0 mi
• Walter P. Acker — 1.0 mi