Saint Joseph's Catholic Church

Priests reached this parish's families before it had a church: Father Pecle visited the Corrigan Ranch as early as 1848, and the earliest Beeville record, from 1876, is signed by Rev. A. M. Chozelle. Rev. Charles Doherty began the building project in 1882 and became the first resident pastor when the church opened in 1891. A storm in August 1916 demolished it. A new church was dedicated on December 20, 1927, under Monsignor John J. Lannon. The parochial school opened in the fall of 1896.

What the plaque says

Saint Joseph's Catholic Church The emergence of this church is associated with Catholic services held by itinerant missionaries in the homes of predominantly Irish settlers located along the texas Gulf Coast in the late 1840s. The oldest written record of St. Joseph's Catholic church dates to 1876. The first church structure, built in 1891, became the site of regular services by the Rev. Raymond Monclus in 1893. St. Mary's Academy, opened by the Sisters of Divine Providence here in 1896,was replaced by St.Joseph's Parochial School in 1931. A new church building was erected in 1992 to serve growing membership. (1992)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Lake Corpus Christi State Park — 25 mi
  A lake park in the South Texas brush country above Mathis, on a reservoir of the Nueces, with a Civilian Conservation Corps refectory and more than 200 bird species.
• Zaragoza Birthplace State Historic Site — 27 mi
  A rebuilt stone house beside La Bahía marking where Ignacio Seguín Zaragoza, the general of the Battle of Puebla and Cinco de Mayo, was born in 1829.
• Presidio La Bahía — 27 mi
  A Spanish fort on its third site since 1749, held in turn by filibusters, insurgents and Fannin's Fort Defiance, rebuilt in stone in the 1960s around a chapel that never fell.
• Fannin Memorial Monument — 28 mi
  The 1938 pink granite memorial over the common grave of Fannin's men, shot on the roads out of Goliad on Palm Sunday 1836, the grave itself found again only in the 1930s.

More markers nearby

• First Methodist Church of Beeville — 0.4 mi
• First Baptist Church of Beeville — 0.4 mi
• Barnard Elliott Bee, Sr. — 0.5 mi
• James Lincoln de la Mothe Borglum — 0.5 mi