St. Michael's Catholic Church

The National Register inventory for Cuero explains what became of the first church. That building was sold to the Second Baptist Church (Colored), now Macedonia Baptist Church, and moved to its present site on South Indianola Street. The brick church now standing was finished about 1930 and 1931 and is the third on the lot. The nomination calls it Romanesque Revival, with twin square towers over paired round arches, cast-stone trim and an apse on the east, and rates it second only to the courthouse among the city's landmarks.

What the plaque says

St. Michael's Catholic Church The Rt. Rev. Anthony Dominic Pellicer, First Bishop of San Antonio, established St. Michael's Parish in 1875, after the Cuero Land and Immigration Co. donated this site for a church. The name was chosen in memory of Michael O'Brien, whose widow was one of the first members. A small frame church was erected in 1876, and the Rev. V. L. Manci, S.J., became the first resident pastor. St. Michael's Parish has operated a Catholic school since 1877. Construction was started on a larger building in 1886, a few months before the first church was damaged by the hurricane that destroyed the coastal town of Indianola. Many of the families who fled Indianola became members of St. Michael's Parish before the brick edifice was completed in 1892. As the parish grew, a new rectory was built in 1894 and new school in 1912. The present church was erected in 1931, through efforts of the Rev. Francis Pallanche, Pastor 1922-32. Soon afterward, the Rev. William Jansen began the longest pastorate in this church's history, 1937-66. Recent expansion has included a new school and convent (1955), rectory (1963), remodeling of school and church building (1960's), and new parish hall (1973). Today St. Michael's has a membership of over 400 families. (1975)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Chisholm Trail Heritage Museum — 0.2 mi
  A cattle-country museum in Cuero's 1903 Knights of Pythias Hall, telling the Guadalupe Valley's 1866 drive north and the Sutton-Taylor feud that bloodied DeWitt County.
• Spoetzl Brewery — 25 mi
  The brewery a Czech and German railroad town started in a tin shed in 1909, run through Prohibition by a Bavarian who had brewed in Cairo, and then by his daughter.
• De León Plaza — 26 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 — 27 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.

More markers nearby

• James Norman Smith — steps away
• World War II Air Training School Brayton Flying Field — steps away
• Cuero Land and Immigration Company — steps away
• Early Texas Bandstands — steps away