Sacred Heart Catholic Church

John Anthony Forest was twenty-four when he reached Lavaca County, a French seminarian ordained in New Orleans in April 1863. General Butler first refused his party entry to the city, suspecting Confederate sympathy. Forest crossed Texas to San Antonio by foot and oxcart by way of Mexico, then went to help Father Charles Padey at St. Mary's at Smothers Creek. He knew little English and no Czech, and within three months had a working vocabulary in both. He did much of the building labor himself, served thirty-two years here, and became bishop of San Antonio in 1895.

What the plaque says

Sacred Heart Catholic Church This congregation was founded as a mission of St. Mary's Catholic Church (about four miles west of Hallettsville). The Rev. John Anthony Forest served the new congregation, as well as other missions in Lavaca County. Early worship services were held in the homes of members, most of whom had recently immigrated to Texas from Europe. Land for a church building was donated by Collatinus and Mary Jane Hallet Ballard in 1869. Construction began in 1873 and was supervised by Father Forest. After the building was completed in 1882, Sacred Heart became a full-time parish. Father Forest served as pastor until 1895, when he left to become bishop of the Diocese of San Antonio. Sacred Heart Academy, located on the grounds of the church, was established by the Sisters of the Incarnate Word and Blessed Sacrament in 1882. The parish continued to operate the school after the nuns relocated to San Antonio in 1926. An important part of Hallettsville history since its founding, Sacred Heart Catholic Church continues to serve the community and counts among its members many descendants of early German and Czech immigrants. (1990)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Lavaca County Courthouse — steps away
  A limestone Romanesque courthouse of 1897-99 on the square of a town founded by a widow trader, in a county seat that once printed the Socialist Party's state paper.
• Spoetzl Brewery — 14 mi
  The brewery a Czech and German railroad town started in a tin shed in 1909, run through Prohibition by a Bavarian who had brewed in Cairo, and then by his daughter.
• St. Mary's Church of the Assumption (Praha) — 17 mi
  The mother parish of the Czech settlements around Flatonia, a stone-fronted church of 1895 whose ceiling Gottfried Flury turned into a turquoise garden, with an August 15 feast since 1855.
• Nativity of Mary, Blessed Virgin Catholic Church (High Hill) — 19 mi
  A red brick Gothic Revival church of 1906 in a German farm settlement, where two San Antonio painters spent 1912 faking marble columns and stone vaults on wood.

More markers nearby

• Hallettsville — steps away
• First National Bank of Hallettsville — steps away
• 50th Anniversary of Battle of Galveston — steps away
• General John W. Whitfield — 0.2 mi