Saint Michael's Catholic Church

The community went by three names. Settlers called it Irish Settlement. When a post office opened at Timothy Gleason's home in 1884 it became Waterford, and in 1889 Gleason renamed it for Burlington, Vermont. The San Antonio and Aransas Pass Railway arrived in 1891, and stock pens went up to hold longhorn cattle for shipment to St. Louis, Chicago and Kansas City. Cotton and lumber went out too. The town grew from fifty people in the mid-1890s to 362 in 1904 and about 600 around 1914. The railroad quit in 1977.

What the plaque says

Saint Michael's Catholic Church Irish Catholic settlers first came to this area in 1875. The community, first called Irish Settlement, was served by visiting priests beginning in 1879. Eight families joined together in 1885 to build a church, which they dedicated to St. Michael. The predominantly Irish membership was eventually joined by a number of German-American Catholics. A parochial school opened in 1891 and was operated by nuns of various orders until it closed in 1956. St. Michael's Cemetery (.7 mi. E) contains burials dating to 1878 and is maintained by the church. (1990)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Milam County Courthouse and Jail — 12 mi
  Cameron's 1892 Renaissance Revival courthouse and the 1895 St. Louis-built jail beside it, now the county museum, are listed together on the National Register.
• Calvert — 19 mi
  A railroad cotton town of 1868 on State Highway 6 that claimed the largest cotton gin in the world and elected Black men to county and state office during Reconstruction.
• Temple Railroad and Heritage Museum — 21 mi
  The Santa Fe depot of 1911 in a railroad town that began in 1880 as a construction camp, now a museum with locomotives and cars parked beside the active rail yard.

More markers nearby

• First Baptist Church of Rosebud — 4.4 mi
• Barclay Cemetery — 7.9 mi
• Little River Baptist Church and Cemetery — 8.7 mi
• S. S. Cyril and Methodius Catholic Church — 8.9 mi