Holy Rosary Catholic Church

The Sisters of the Holy Family, who took over the school in 1898, had a founder with a story of her own. Henriette Delille was a free woman of color, born in 1813, who began the New Orleans congregation to teach and catechize enslaved people at a time when the law forbade it. A parish website calls the community the second-oldest surviving congregation of African American sisters. The sisters took over St. Nicholas School in Houston in 1905 and taught in diocesan schools across the Galveston-Houston diocese for more than a century.

What the plaque says

Holy Rosary Catholic Church Holy Rosary Church, one of the first African American catholic parishes in Texas, had its beginnings in a school. In 1886, Bishop Nicholas A. Gallagher opened an elementary school for African American children in a one-room cottage on 12th Street and Avenue K. The Dominican sisters were the first to staff the school. It grew so rapidly that a new and larger school opened just two years later. The bishop celebrated mass at the school on Sundays, and the small congregation became the nucleus of a new parish. As the church and school grew, Fr. Philip Keller was appointed the first pastor in December of 1889. The Sisters of the Holy Family took charge of the school in 1898. They were the first African American sisters to teach in diocesan schools in Texas. Under the sisters, the school was incorporated as the Holy Rosary Industrial School and orphan's home. More than 200 people found safe refuge at the parish during the great 1900 storm, but the buildings were badly damaged. In 1913, the Josephite fathers took over the administration of the parish. One year later, the parish moved to this site on 31st Street and Avenue N. Here the first catholic high school for African Americans opened in 1927 (closing in 1951). By 1958, the parish had a new church, convent and elementary school. Due to damages sustained in hurricane Ike in 2008, only the church could be restored. Today, holy rosary church forms part of the Holy Family Parish in Galveston, uniting the historic catholic churches in Galveston dating back to 1839. (2017)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Moody Mansion — 0.5 mi
  A four-story, 28,000-square-foot house on Broadway, finished in 1895, that W. L. Moody Jr. bought just after the 1900 storm and his family kept until Hurricane Alicia in 1983.
• 1859 Ashton Villa — 0.6 mi
  A brick Italianate house on Broadway, built with enslaved labor in 1859, whose lawn has held Galveston's Juneteenth commemoration of General Orders, No. 3 every year since 1979.
• The Strand — 1.0 mi
  Five blocks of iron-front brick buildings near the harbor that were once called the Wall Street of the Southwest, emptied after 1900 and brought back by preservationists from the 1960s.
• Texas Seaport Museum and the Elissa — 1.2 mi
  An iron barque launched in Aberdeen in 1877 that called at Galveston twice, ended up smuggling in the Adriatic, and was bought back from a Greek scrapyard to sail again from Pier 22.

More markers nearby

• Galveston Artillery Club — steps away
• Shiloh A. M. E. Church — steps away
• Site of the Home of Michael Branaman Menard — steps away
• The Mexican Telegraph Company_The Zimmermann Telegram — 0.2 mi