St. Stephen's Episcopal Church

The young priest in the plaque's last line was better known on a football field. Frank Juhan, born in Macon, Georgia, in 1887 and raised in Texas, played center for Sewanee from 1908 to 1910 and was, by the Hall of Fame's account, the first player in the South to rove as a linebacker. Ordained a priest in 1912, he had charge of Goliad and Beeville while chaplain at the West Texas Military Academy. He was bishop of Florida from 1924 to 1956 and entered the College Football Hall of Fame in 1966.

What the plaque says

St. Stephen's Episcopal Church Begun as a mission, 1861, by the Very Rev. W. R. Richardson, Dean of St. Mark's, San Antonio. R. P. Wilkinson donated site. Church was built 1882, consecrated in 1885 by the Rt. Rev. R. W. Elliott, first bishop of western Texas. Elevated to parish status in 1913, under the Rev. Frank Juhan, later bishop of Florida. (1972)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Goliad State Park and Historic Site — 0.8 mi
  Mission Espíritu Santo on the San Antonio River, a mission ranch whose herds seeded Texas cattle country, rebuilt from ruin by the Civilian Conservation Corps in the 1930s.
• Presidio La Bahía — 1.5 mi
  A Spanish fort on its third site since 1749, held in turn by filibusters, insurgents and Fannin's Fort Defiance, rebuilt in stone in the 1960s around a chapel that never fell.
• Zaragoza Birthplace State Historic Site — 1.5 mi
  A rebuilt stone house beside La Bahía marking where Ignacio Seguín Zaragoza, the general of the Battle of Puebla and Cinco de Mayo, was born in 1829.
• Fannin Memorial Monument — 1.7 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

• Founding Site of First Baptist Church of Goliad — steps away
• First United Methodist Church of Goliad — steps away
• Goliad Advance-Guard — steps away
• Bull Durham Advertisement — steps away