The Reverend Joseph Chromcik

Chromcik came on a ticket the people of Fayetteville had paid for. Answering Bishop Dubuis's plea, he sailed by way of Cuba and New Orleans and landed at Galveston in December 1872 with no one to meet him. At Ellinger, townspeople who did not know who he was gave him food, clothing, a feather bed and a pillow, and he said his first Mass at Fayetteville on Christmas Day. He taught fifteen years in his school of 1875. His long rides to outlying churches led him to press for passable roads and bridges.

What the plaque says

The Reverend Joseph Chromcik Czech Catholics, who settled in Fayette County in the mid-1850s, were initially served by area priests. Eventually they petitioned the Bishop of Texas for their own Czech priest, and in 1872 the Rev. Joseph Chromcik (1845-1910) arrived from Europe. He held his first service in Fayetteville that year and became Texas' first permanent Czech Catholic priest. He established Chromcik School and many churches, and was instrumental in establishing the KJT, or Czech Catholic Union of Texas. He was fondly referred to as "Taticek" (dear little father) by many of the people who knew him. (1994)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Texas Wendish Heritage Museum — 23 mi
  A museum at Serbin of the Wends, a Slavic people from Lusatia whose congregation of nearly 600 crossed on the Ben Nevis in 1854, losing seventy-three to cholera on the way.

More markers nearby

• Fayetteville — 0.2 mi
• Phillip James Shaver — 0.2 mi
• The Rev. Jindrich Juren — 1.7 mi
• James J. Ross — 4.9 mi