St. John's Episcopal Church

Palacios lay about a mile and a half from Collegeport across the bay, but 22 miles by road. In 1926 Fred Pybus and J. E. Lothridge took the Collegeport church apart, and George Harrison trucked the pieces over dirt roads while the crew crossed by boat each day. Women brought lunch. Gifts covered about nine-tenths of the cost of a building valued at $2,500, and Grace Smith logged every one. Rebuilt in the same size and design, it was reconsecrated on March 20, 1927, and the last of its debt was released in 1939.

What the plaque says

St. John's Episcopal Church The community of Collegeport was founded in 1908 across the Tres Palacios Bay from Palacios, which had been established in 1902. Three Collegeport families organized an Episcopal congregation. Grace Theodora Smith collected donations from local residents and businesses to raise funds for land and a church building. She collected nearly all the money needed, and Bishop George Herbert Kinsolving gave the last dollars toward building the structure. Grace Smith envisioned a Mission style structure, and the congregation purchased the lumber and concrete blocks to build it, completing it in August 1911, when the Rev. John Sloan of St. Mark's Episcopal Church of Bay City held the first service. In November of that year, Bishop Kinsolving consecrated the church, which he named Grace Church of St. Mary's Mission in honor of Smith and her hard work. Smith wed Edgar G. Jones at the church in 1914. Because of adverse weather conditions, including a freeze, a tidal wave and a hurricane, many local residents eventually left the area and the church. The sanctuary fell into disuse by the early 1920s. In 1922, Bishop Clinton S. Quin established St. John's Episcopal Church in Palacios, which met for a time at the home of Sara Jane Pybus. In 1926, her son, Fred Pybus, and others, including J.E. Lothridge and George A. Harrison, moved the Grace Church building from Collegeport to Palacios. Bishop Quin consecrated it as St. John's Mission on March 20, 1927. Since that time, St. John's congregation has refurbished the sanctuary and added a parish hall. Membership has remained steady, and the congregation continues to gather for worship and education, a testament to the strong foundation laid by early area Episcopal residents. (2004)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Indianola — 21 mi
  The site of Texas's second port, where Morgan's steamships, Army freight and the first refrigerated beef passed until the hurricanes of 1875 and 1886, now mostly under Matagorda Bay.
• Half Moon Reef Lighthouse and Linnville — 25 mi
  The last screw-pile lighthouse of the Texas coast, brought ashore at Port Lavaca, a town founded by refugees from Linnville, the port Buffalo Hump's Comanches burned in August 1840.

More markers nearby

• First Baptist Church of Palacios — steps away
• First Presbyterian Church of Palacios — steps away
• First United Methodist Church of Palacios — 0.2 mi
• Palacios Pavilions — 0.2 mi