Saint John's Episcopal Church

The storm that destroyed this congregation's first church had already wrecked Galveston, home of its supporter George Sealy. John Edward Weems's Handbook of Texas entry records a storm warning on September 7, 1900, and the Weather Bureau's Isaac Cline driving a horse cart through low streets urging people out. On September 8 the anemometer blew away after averaging 84 mph, and water reached 15.7 feet. Between 6,000 and 8,000 died in the city. Galveston answered with commission government, a seawall seventeen feet high and pumped sand that raised its grade by as much as seventeen feet.

What the plaque says

Saint John's Episcopal Church This congregation was organized in 1885, five years after the railroad town of Sealy was founded. Among the church's early supporters was railroad official George Sealy, for whom the town was named and who served on the missionary board of the Episcopal Diocese of Texas. The congregation's first building, erected two blocks north of this site in 1889, was destroyed in the 1900 hurricane. A new church structure was built at this site in 1910. Throughout its history, Saint John's Church has served the community with worship, educational, and outreach programs. (1992)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• San Felipe de Austin State Historic Site — 4.1 mi
  Stephen F. Austin's colonial capital on a Brazos bluff, the town of the Consultation and the first Texas newspapers, burned by its own garrison in the Runaway Scrape of 1836.
• Attwater Prairie Chicken National Wildlife Refuge — 11 mi
  Ten thousand acres of native coastal prairie northeast of Eagle Lake, kept for a critically endangered grouse, many of whose birds are hatched in captivity and released here.
• Stafford Opera House — 24 mi
  A cattleman's bank and theater of 1886 on the Columbus square, in a river town Sam Houston burned in 1836 and a county marked by a long feud and a 1935 lynching.

More markers nearby

• Trinity Lutheran Church — steps away
• Citizens State Bank — steps away
• Sealy — 0.2 mi
• Haynes Mattress Factory — 0.4 mi