Church of the Good Shepherd Episcopal

The bishop who sent this parish its first minister had a hard war. Alexander Gregg, elected first bishop of Texas in 1859, brought his family and the people he enslaved from South Carolina in January 1860, and his field covered the whole state until 1874. When Texas seceded he held that the church in the Confederacy must follow the government and leave the national church. After the war he urged reunion, and five Texas deputies sat at the 1865 General Convention. Not every clergyman agreed with him; the Austin rector Charles Gillette clashed with him.

What the plaque says

Church of the Good Shepherd Episcopal The earliest recorded visit of an Episcopal priest to Corpus Christi was that of the Rev. Lucius H. Jones in 1857. Three years later, a congregation was formally organized on the second floor of the Nueces County Courthouse. Bishop Alexander Gregg appointed the Rev. S.D. Davenport as the first minister. The women of the congregation soon organized a group known as the Dorcas Sewing Society, which over the years has provided much support to the church. The early years of the church were difficult ones. Corpus Christi's location on the edge of the frontier and the coming of the Civil War contributed to this difficulty. There are no recorded meetings of the church from 1862 until the end of the Civil War, and the congregation was without a minister for almost 11 years. During the late 1870s, the Church of the Good Shepherd constructed its first permanent building at the corner of Taylor and Chaparral streets. Additional facilities were built later, and in 1926 the congregation moved to its current location. Over the years, the church has emphasized programs of Christian education, ecumenical cooperation, and missionary activity in Corpus Christi. (1985)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Mirador de la Flor — 0.8 mi
  Corpus Christi's bayfront memorial to Selena Quintanilla-Pérez, the Tejano singer from this city, killed in 1995 at twenty-three, visited by about thirty thousand people a year.
• Art Museum of South Texas — 1.7 mi
  Philip Johnson's 1972 museum on the Corpus Christi bayfront, joined in 2006 by Ricardo Legorreta's Miller Wing, holding more than 2,000 works mostly from Texas and the Americas.
• Texas State Aquarium — 1.9 mi
  A nonprofit aquarium on the tip of Corpus Christi Beach built around the Gulf and the Caribbean, with the largest coastal wildlife rescue center in Texas behind the exhibits.
• USS Lexington Museum on the Bay — 2.0 mi
  An Essex-class carrier of 1943 moored off North Beach, the Blue Ghost that Tokyo Rose kept reporting sunk, and the Navy's training carrier for nearly three decades after.

More markers nearby

• Centennial Memorial Museum — 0.2 mi
• First Methodist Church of Corpus Christi — 0.2 mi
• Confederate Army Deserters Hanged in Corpus Christi — 0.4 mi
• Felix von Blucher — 0.4 mi