Saint Mary's Catholic Church

Bishop Christopher Edward Byrne, briefly the acting pastor here, led the Diocese of Galveston for three decades. Born in Byrnesville, Missouri, in 1867 and ordained in St. Louis in 1891, he spent about twenty-eight years in Missouri parishes before succeeding Nicholas A. Gallagher as fourth bishop of Galveston on November 27, 1918. He helped the church lead the 1936 Texas Centennial with a Field Mass at the San Jacinto battleground, and he backed the work that became Carlos E. Castaneda's seven-volume Our Catholic Heritage in Texas. The diocese grew from 70,000 to 200,000 Catholics under him.

What the plaque says

Saint Mary's Catholic Church Catholics in this area organized services in 1880 at a chapel on William Mark Wittenburg's ranch (about 23 mi. NW). In 1885 they built a church on West Fifth Street in Lampasas, dedicated to Saint Mary. Mass was celebrated once a month for a parish covering 3,200 square miles. After 1900 Father Joseph le Gardeur, chaplain at the nearby convent and school, offered weekly Mass. In 1907 he was made resident pastor of this congregation. Bishop Christopher E. Byrne (1867-1950) served briefly as acting pastor in 1921. A stone sanctuary built in 1940 on this site burned in 1970, replaced by a new building in 1972. Texas Sesquicentennial 1836 - 1986

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Hancock Springs Park — 1.3 mi
  Lampasas's city park on Sulphur Creek, with a spring-fed swimming pool that holds about 69 degrees all year, the walls of the old bathhouse and a golf course.
• Colorado Bend State Park — 18 mi
  Old ranch country on the Colorado above Lake Buchanan, where a spring-fed creek drops 70 feet over fern-covered travertine at Gorman Falls.
• Inks Lake State Park — 26 mi
  A state park on a constant-level lake of the Colorado, between Buchanan and Inks dams, with pink granite and gneiss at the water and CCC work along Park Road 4.
• Inks Dam National Fish Hatchery — 27 mi
  A free federal hatchery below Inks Dam on the Colorado, with thirty production ponds that draw birds and a look at how fish are raised from egg to harvest.

More markers nearby

• Site of Abney Plunge — 0.3 mi
• First Public School in Lampasas — 0.4 mi
• Pierian Club — 0.5 mi
• Hanna Springs — 0.5 mi