Site of St. Joseph's Church

The convent and monastery served a mission field far larger than Marienfeld. Its priests traveled regularly to Big Spring and Midland, and now and then as far as New Mexico, to say Mass, while the nuns opened schools and hospitals in Big Spring, Pecos, Menard, Fort Stockton and Slaton. Father Anastasius and his brother Boniface, both priests, wrote promotional bulletins for the colony and traveled to Germany to recruit settlers. In 1925 the Stanton sisters merged with the Sisters of Mercy of the Diocese of Oklahoma, and most of them left town.

What the plaque says

Site of St. Joseph's Church With the purpose of founding a monastery and a German Catholic colony, Carmelite Monks, in 1881, began the first Catholic church between Fort Worth and El Paso. The adobe and brick monastery was completed in 1884, and St. Joseph's Church in 1885. Sisters of Divine Providence opened a short-lived school, 1887; reopened, 1894, by Sisters of Mercy. In 1897, Carmelite Monks disbanded and sold property to Sisters of Mercy, who operated a convent and academy until abandonment after tornado of June 11, 1938. All that remains are a dormitory, ruins of other buildings, and the cemetery. (1973)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Hangar 25 Air Museum — 17 mi
  A restored World War II hangar on the old air base above Big Spring, telling the story of the bombardier school of 1942 and of Webb Air Force Base, which trained pilots until 1977.
• Big Spring State Park — 19 mi
  A CCC drive looping up Scenic Mountain, a 200-foot bluff above the town that grew around the only dependable spring within sixty miles of open Llano country.
• Bush Family Home State Historic Site — 20 mi
  The small 1939 frame house on West Ohio Avenue where George and Barbara Bush raised their young family in Midland's 1950s oil boom, now a Texas Historical Commission site.
• Hotel Settles — 20 mi
  Big Spring's fifteen-story hotel of 1930, built on ranch oil money, once the tallest building between Fort Worth and El Paso, empty and roosted in by pigeons for decades and now restored.

More markers nearby

• Marienfeld — steps away
• First United Methodist Church of Stanton — steps away
• Martin County — 1.4 mi
• Marcy Trail — 15 mi