Site of Victoria's First Church

The first church grew into St. Mary's, reputedly the second-oldest Catholic parish in Texas. By the early 1870s it had a brick church, a convent and a convent school. In 1894 the parish started a larger church to a design by Nicholas Clayton of Galveston, but the first contractor defaulted and work stopped until 1903. Bailey Mills then built the limestone church, finished in 1904 from plans by Phelps and King of San Antonio, with Italian stonecutters who had worked on the State Capitol. The old brick was saved for the school.

What the plaque says

Site of Victoria's First Church Erected by Martin De Leon, founder of Victoria, soon after his arrival in October, 1824. Priests serving there were Rev. Fathers Jose Miguel Muro, Jose Antonio Valdez, Antonio Diaz De Leon, O.M.F. The church was restored in 1840 by Most Rev. John Mary Odin, first Catholic Bishop of Texas. In 1850 Father Agustine Gardet had it removed to the northwest corner of the lot where Nazareth Convent now stands.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• De León Plaza — 0.2 mi
  The central plaza of Guadalupe Victoria, the only predominantly Mexican colony in Texas, founded by Martín De León in 1824 and taken from his family after 1836.
• Museum of the Coastal Bend — 2.0 mi
  Victoria College's museum of thirteen thousand years on the middle Texas coast, from Clovis hunters and Karankawa potters to La Salle's lost Fort St. Louis and the first ranches.
• Fannin Battleground State Historic Site — 16 mi
  The open prairie east of Goliad where Fannin's retreating column formed a square short of the Coleto Creek timber on March 19, 1836, and surrendered the next day.
• Fannin Memorial Monument — 25 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

• In Memory of Edward Conrad — steps away
• Site of Round Top House — steps away
• Home of Empresario Martin De Leon — steps away
• This Marker Faces the Site_Home of John Joseph Linn — steps away