St. Joseph's Catholic Church

People often treat Las Gallinas and Leming as one place, and the Handbook of Texas does give Las Gallinas as Leming's first post office name. A descendant writing to Texas Escapes insisted they are separate communities about three miles apart: Leming on US 281 at Farm Road 1470, Gallinas around the creek of that name near FM 536. Gallinas keeps St. Joseph Cemetery and a monument on the burned church site, lettered 1876-1983. It has no highway sign, which the writer blamed for the confusion.

What the plaque says

St. Joseph's Catholic Church Settlement along Gallinas Creek began in the early 1850s, before the creation of Atascosa County in 1856. In succeeding years, a group of families, several originating from Upper Silesia, Poland, settled in the area. These included the Kasper Kalka, Frank Kinas, Joseph Kindla Sr., John Korus, Charles Salzman, Sophie Skwortz, Stanislaus Slomchinski, Christian Eichman, Victor Hug, Wilfred Toudouze, Benjamin Arnold, Thomas Haiduk, Vicente Huizar and Alcario Gonzales families. Most families in this settlement called Gallinas (also known as Las Gallinas) were Catholic and in 1876 eight families established a new parish, St. Joseph's Catholic Church. It was one of the early predominantly Polish Catholic churches in the state. Father Chapalar came on horseback to say Mass in the home of Kasper Kalka, and on holy days when no priest was present families gathered in the Kalka home to recite together the "Mysteries of the Holy Rosary and the Litany of the Saints." In 1880, Kasper and Maria Kalka, John and Marianna Korus, and Charles and Anna (Annie) Salzman donated land "for the purpose of obtaining forever a place of public worship." Kasper Kalka also donated land for a church cemetery. A post office in Gallinas operated from 1880 to 1912. Construction on a new church building began in 1881 and was completed in 1896 to include a forty-foot bell tower. Father Rupprecht became the first resident pastor in 1900. Benedictine sisters established a convent and school at Gallinas in 1919. Growth in the settlement and the church was affected by families moving to other communities, leading to the closing of the convent and school in the 1920s and the church in 1981. The church building was destroyed by fire in 1983, but the impact and influence of St. Joseph's can still be measured generations after its founding. (2018)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Longhorn Museum — 9.3 mi
  Atascosa County in one roadside museum: longhorn-and-mustang ranching, a moved railroad depot and caboose, a horse-drawn hearse and the town that calls itself the birthplace of the cowboy.
• Atascosa County Courthouse — 14 mi
  The only surviving Mission Revival courthouse in Texas, built in 1912-13 on Jourdanton's town circle after a county seat vote that some residents still call a theft.
• Mission Espada and the Espada Aqueduct — 14 mi
  The southernmost San Antonio mission and the oldest Spanish aqueduct in the United States, still carrying river water over Sixmile Creek to the fields after nearly three centuries.
• Mission San Juan — 15 mi
  The mission near the river bend where the San Antonio got its name in 1691, with an unfinished church foundation and farm fields still watered by an eighteenth-century acequia.

More markers nearby

• Battle of Medina — 3.6 mi
• Robert E. Neill — 4.3 mi
• Verdi — 6.5 mi
• Poteet — 7.8 mi