texas AUTHENTIC
T H E
H E R I T A G E
M A G A Z I N
T E X A S
STAINED GLASS ART SAN ANTONIO’S
Cavallini Studio
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THE NATIONAL
GAME
of Texas FAITH-BASED
Colleges and Universities
SAN ANGELO’S
MYSTICAL LADY IN BLUE
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BEAUMONT MUSEUM DISTRICT PAINT ROCK PICTOGRAPHS JAMES AVERY ARTISAN JEWELRY EL PASO’S YSLETA MISSION
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RESTORATION
J.P. Bryan OF
How a Houston businessman and avid collector transformed the West Texas town of Marathon VOLUME 3 WINTER 2018 -‘19 EDITION
FROM THE TEXAS HERITAGE TRAILS LLC
A texas AUTHENTIC
T H E
H E R I T A G E
M A G A Z I N
T E X A S
STAINED GLASS ART SAN ANTONIO’S
Cavallini Studio
42:
THE NATIONAL
GAME
of Texas FAITH-BASED
Colleges and Universities
SAN ANGELO’S
MYSTICAL LADY IN BLUE
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THE
RESTORATION
J.P. Bryan OF
How a Houston businessman and avid collector transformed the West Texas town of Marathon
BEAUMONT MUSEUM DISTRICT PAINT ROCK PICTOGRAPHS JAMES AVERY ARTISAN JEWELRY EL PASO’S YSLETA MISSION
VOLUME 3 WINTER 2018 -‘19 EDITION
COVER PHOTOGRAPH: Stuart Villanueva, Coast Monthly
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Bill Simon, Manager Texas Pecos Trail Region
COURTESY TEXAS HISTORICAL COMMISSION
WELCOME TO TEXAS, a diverse land of different faiths. Whether a belief in supernatural spirits or the guidance of a supreme being, faith has been demonstrated through the ages by Native Americans up to today’s modern family. The heritage of faith in the state proves as vast as the plains of Texas themselves. Faith was exhibited by those first “Texans” from differing Indian cultures who believed these lands would provide for their needs. Faith was demonstrated by the conviction of Spanish, French and Mexican explorers who arrived to conquer this great land. During the 1500s, the commitment to tame the unknown expanse was never more evident as explorers demonstrated faith in conquering seas, arid climates and undocumented dangers. Overcoming fear with faith, the “Texicans” of 1836 moved forward, laying the foundation for a new independent country. These pioneers had a belief in themselves and their fellow man. Much like America’s Founding Fathers, with high hopes and fervent prayers, Texicans from all backgrounds devoted their lives to establishing a land of new opportunity. Texans from a variety of backgrounds and cultures continue to have faith this land will continue to provide for future generations, just as it provided for those before them. Faith in the future of this state caused schools and medical facilities to be built. Texans are known worldwide as strong in brotherhood and faith. Thank you for spending time with the 2018 winter edition of Authentic Texas as we explore the state’s heritage of faith. It may surprise some that organized religion developed slowly in the state; however, there’s no doubt that churches were a civilizing force. People of faith greatly influenced the growth and development of Texas through the support of educational and medical facilities, and by addressing social issues such as temperance, race relations and ethical leadership. From all of us here at Authentic Texas — come on back and read us again, ya hear?!
Contents WINTER 2018
44
34
40
AUTHENTIC PERSON
AUTHENTIC PLACE
AUTHENTIC THING
J. P. Bryan, the entrepreneur and avid collector who helped transform Marathon, Texas, is committed to preserving and celebrating the state’s history. And now, the Freeport native’s collection of 70,000 artifacts from the American West are on display in his own Bryan Museum in Galveston.
The San Fernando Cathedral, the first church built in San Antonio — its cornerstone was laid years before the Alamo was constructed — is the oldest standing church in Texas. Now, with the help of an acclaimed French artist, San Fernando is also one of the top tourist destinations in the Lone Star State.
On Oct. 2, 1835, a small group of rebellious colonists in what is now South Texas defied Mexican rule with the memorable battle cry, “Come and take it!” The men of Gonzales fired a small cannon and raised a flag sewn from a wedding dress that showed a lone star, an image of the cannon and those four immortal words.
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STUART VILLANUEVA/ COAST MONTHLY
FEATURES
Contents EL PASO MISSION TRAIL, P. 50
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HAPPENINGS
LEGACY
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TEXAS HISTORICAL COMMISSION
Praha’s “Painted Church” St. Mary’s Church of the Assumption features distinctive interior painting and a compelling history.
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TEXAS ORIGINALS
Kay Campbell
The caretaker and resident historian of Paint Rock pictographs has a passion for educating visitors.
LOCAL
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TEXAS ICON
42
Lindsay’s “Painted Church,” erected in 1892, has undergone major renovations a number of times, reflecting the devotion of its parishioners.
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CITY LIGHTS
The “national game of Texas” is a four-player, trick-taking domino game with bidding and trumps, played like a card game.
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YONDER
Iwo Jima
The Marine Military Academy in Harlingen houses the original plaster model for the World War II memorial.
James Avery
Hand-crafted jewelry lovers travel to Kerrville to enjoy the many charms of the Avery Retail Store.
Clarendon
The history of the Panhandle city speaks of virtue and wholesomeness, earning the former Christian colony its nickname, the Saints’ Roost.
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St. Peter’s
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San Angelo
Converting Jumano Indians to Christianity — the state’s first missionary effort — was the work of a mysterious “Lady in Blue.”
Beaumont
Three museums — the Texas Energy Museum, the Edison Museum and the Fire Museum of Texas — tell the story of an oil-rich boomtown.
Fredericksburg
Farmland given to German settlers necessitated the building of small Sunday Houses for worship.
LIFE
50
TRAIL DRIVES
Mission Trail El Paso
Texas’ lone pueblo is among the missions you can visit in “Sun City.”
Faith-Based Colleges
Institutions of higher learning with faith-based missions dot the landscape of Texas.
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EATS & DRINKS
Argo’s Holy Smokes Susie’s
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DEEP IN THE ART
Pipe Organs
Thanks to the oil boom in East Texas in the 1890s and early 1900s, communities pumped their newfound wealth into instruments of worship.
Stained Glass
San Antonio’s premier studio has been enhancing churches and other establishments throughout Texas for more than six decades.
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LIBRARY AND ARCHIVES
Franciscan Missions
Between 1632 and 1793, Spanish friars built missions charged with providing religious and vocational training for Native Americans.
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HISTORIES
Spiritual Awakening
The history of religion in Texas is complex, fascinating and inspiring.
Trails in This Issue Brazos 52, 67 Forest 30, 58, 62, 67 Forts 28, 52, 56, 67, 77 Hill Country 20, 32, 35,
67, 80
Independence 40, 52, 64, 67, 74
Lakes 26, 52, 67 Mountain 50 Pecos 60, 67 Plains 24, 67 Tropical 18, 67
COURTESY TY:ER CVB; COURTESY THE STRUTTERS OF TEXAS STATE UNIVERSITY-SAN MARCOS
Departments
TRAILS MAP THE TEXAS HERITAGE TRAILS program is based on 10 scenic driving trails created in 1968
by Gov. John Connally and the Texas Highway Department (now the Texas Department of Transportation) as a tool for visitors to explore the Lone Star State. The trails were established in conjunction with HemisFair, an international expo that commemorated the 250th anniversary of the founding of San Antonio. In 1997, the State Legislature charged the Texas Historical Commission with creating a statewide heritage tourism program. The THC responded with a program based on local, regional and state partnerships, centered on the 10 scenic driving trails. Today, each trail region is a nonprofit organization governed by a regional board of directors that supports educational and preservation efforts and facilitates community development through heritage tourism.
PUBLISHER
Stewart Ramser ADVERTISING
Julie A. Kunkle, Associate Publisher Christina Olivarez, Advertising Director Senior Account Executives: Macaulay Hammond, Denise Janove, Mike McKee, Tina Mullins, Misty Pennock, Maxine Pittman, Jasmine Allgood Ward Abigail Stewart, Advertising Sales Manager Jillian Clifton, Advertising Sales Coordinator ART DIRECTOR
Martha Gazella-Taylor, Gazella Design EDITOR
Tom Buckley ASSOCIATE EDITOR
PLAINS TRAIL REGION
Kirstin Cutts CONTRIBUTORS
Valerie D. Bates, Paul Beckling, Jeremy Burchard, Tilly Chandler, Gus Clemens, Loretta Fulton, Trey Gutierrez, Ryan Griffin, Macy Hurwitz, Cassandra Lance-Martinez, Timothy Phillips, Andy Rhodes, John W. Storey
LAKES TRAIL REGION FORTS TRAIL REGION MOUNTAIN TRAIL REGION
EDITORIAL BOARD
PECOS TRAIL REGION
BRAZOS TRAIL REGION
HILL COUNTRY TRAIL REGION
FOREST TRAIL REGION
INDEPENDENCE TRAIL REGION
TROPICAL TRAIL REGION
Coleman Hampton, Texas Brazos Trail Region Jeff Salmon, Texas Forts Trail Region Patty Bushart, Texas Lakes Trail Region Robert Alvarez, Texas Mountain Trail Region Bill Simon, Texas Pecos Trail Region Kay Ellington, Texas Plains Trail Region Rick Stryker, Texas Tropical Trail Region EXECUTIVE DIRECTORS OF PARTICIPATING TEXAS HERITAGE TRAIL REGIONS
Andrea Barefield, Texas Brazos Trail Region Margaret Hoogstra, Texas Forts Trail Region Jill Campbell Jordan, Texas Lakes Trail Region Wendy Little, Texas Mountain Trail Region Melissa Hagins, Texas Pecos Trail Region Barbara Brannon, Texas Plains Trail Region Nancy Deviney, Texas Tropical Trail Region
Legend
BRAZOS TRAIL TexasBrazosTrail.com
INDEPENDENCE TRAIL TexasIndependenceTrail.com
FORTS TRAIL TexasFortsTrail.com
MOUNTAIN TRAIL TexasMountainTrail.com
FOREST TRAIL TexasForestTrail.com
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PECOS TRAIL TexasPecosTrail.com
HILL COUNTRY TRAIL TxHillCountryTrail.com
PLAINS TRAIL TexasPlainsTrail.com
LAKES TRAIL TexasLakesTrail.com
TROPICAL TRAIL TexasTropicalTrail.com
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Texas Heritage Trails LLC 3702 Loop 322 Abilene, TX 79602 AuthenticTexas.com (325) 660-6774 Texas Heritage Trails LLC is owned and operated by seven nonprofit heritage trails organizations. Texas Heritage Trails LLC member organizations are participants of the nationally award-winning Texas Heritage Trails Program of the Texas Historical Commission. Texas Heritage Trails, LLC dba Authentic Texas is a member of the Texas Travel Industry Association and is a Go Texan partner.
LOCAL
TEXAS ICON p. 16 H YONDER p. 20 H CITY LIGHTS p. 28 H FEATURES p. 34
FLAG of our
VALERIE D BATES
FATHERS
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LOCAL TEXAS ICON
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42 developed as an alternative to a forbidden pastime: card playing
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EQUIRING SKILL and patience, 42 is a domino game similar in strategy to the card game bridge, though not as complicated. 42 gets its name from the total of points to be won in each hand. It requires four players, a set of dominoes, a pencil and score pad. The game became a national pastime of sorts for Texans — anytime a group gathered, there was usually at least one game of 42. The year was 1887, and in Trapps Spring (now Garner), about 45 miles west of Fort Worth, Baptists were the law and card playing the devil’s work. Two young boys, 12-year-old William Thomas and 14-year-old Walter Earl, were typical young kids who liked to play cards, and one spring day they were caught playing a card game in the hayloft by one of their parents. The other parents were notified, the cards were burned, and the boys got spankings. Since dominoes weren’t sinful by Baptist law, the pair set out to invent a game of cards but with dominoes. For about four months, William and Walter played and made up rules for their new game. And thus 42 was born. The boys introduced the game to their families, who shared it with their small community, and it took off.
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COURTESY GOSS IMAGES
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Texas State Partners Domino Championship Founded in 1951 by the Hallettsville Knights of Columbus, the Texas State Championship Partners Domino Double Elimination is now the largest and most prestigious state championship domino tournament. Players from across the country compete for the state title. The tournament is held annually on the third Sunday in January. The Knights of Columbus Father Mathis Council #2433 Hallettsville, TX (361) 798-2311 kchall.com
Texas State Championship “42” Domino Tournament
shuffled facedown, players draw seven tiles each to make up their hand. (Whoever shuffles picks last.) The objective is to be the first team to score 250 points by bidding and winning tricks or by setting your opponent. If that all sounds complicated, plenty of online videos and websites are available to learn the game or improve your performance.
For more than three decades, Hallettsville has hosted the Texas State Championship “42” Domino Tournament, honoring one of the most popular domino games in the state. It attracts the best domino players from all over Texas and New Mexico for one intense competition. Trophies and cash prizes are awarded. It’s held the first Saturday in March.
Hallettsville Chamber of Commerce and Agriculture 1614 N Texana St. Hallettsville, TX 77964 (361) 798-2662 hallettsville.com
FROM TOP: DAVID R. TRIBBLE; WYATT MCSPADDEN
Everyone seemed to be playing 42. After the start of World War II, Texas military men taught it to their fellow fighting men. 42 took over as the game to play in domino halls and soon became the “national game.” In 2011, 42 was designated as the official domino game of Texas. The game is still popular, mainly in Texas. Halletsville hosts an annual state championship on the first Saturday in March, and the Texas Senior Games crowns 42 champions each year. People of all ages play the game in homes, churches and clubs. “I learned to play as a kid,” native Texan Debbie Kelly says. “I watched my parents and grandparents play as I was growing up. Both my maternal and paternal grandparents played, as well as numerous uncles, aunts and cousins. As a kid, being asked to play with the older cousins was as exciting as being picked first in school to be on a team. There were lots of laughs, a few arguments, some winning and losing but always a good time making memories that even today transport me back to those days. To me, 42 is family.” To play the game, players split into teams of two, with partners seated across from each other. After the dominoes are
RISE TO THE OCCASION: On the fifth day of battle on Iwo Jima, Marine Corporal Harlan Block’s rifle platoon was sent to raise a large American flag on the island’s highest point, Mount Suribachi. The event was captured in a worldfamous photograph by Joe Rosenthal, which inspired Felix de Weldon (above) to sculpt the Iwo Jima War Memorial for the Arlington National Cemetery. The original model of that monument (left) is at the Marine Military Academy in Harlingen.
Iwo Jima Museum & Gift Shop 320 Iwo Jima Blvd. Harlingen, TX 78550 (956) 421-9234 MMA-Tx.org/VisitorCenter
YONDER
Uncommon Valor
HOURS
Mon.– Sat. 10 am–4 pm
Marine Military Academy 320 Iwo Jima Blvd. Harlingen, TX 78550 MMA-Tx.org
The original plaster model of the Iwo Jima Memorial sits on the grounds of the Marine Military Academy in Harlingen VALERIE D. BATES
after a hard-fought and costly battle on Iwo Jima, six individuals, representing 220,000 brave fellow American fighting soldiers, hoisted the American flag over Mount Suribachi. Associated Press photographer Joe Rosenthal, also at the summit, pointed his camera, framed the shot, pressed the shutter release button and captured a Pulitzer Prizewinning photograph that would be widely published the following Sunday, Feb. 25.
ON FEBRUARY 23, 1945,
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Within 48 hours of the publication of Rosenthal’s flag-raising photograph, Felix de Weldon, an Austrian-born American sculptor who served in the U.S. Navy during World War II, was so moved by the image he fashioned a plaster model. Following the war, Congress commissioned de Weldon to construct a statue for the Marine Corps War Memorial based on his model, which became the cast bronze monument installed in Washington, D.C., on Nov. 10, 1954,
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visitharlingentexas.com
PHOTOS VALERIE D. BATES
the 179th anniversary of the founding of the Marine Corps. The original plaster model remained with de Weldon for more than three decades, and, in 1981, he gifted the original model to the Marine Military Academy in Harlingen to inspire cadets at the institution. The model was cut into 107 pieces, and, after 16 weeks of preparation, it was placed on 10 flatbed trucks and shipped from Rhode Island to
The site of the Marine Corps War Memorial, otherwise known as the Iwo Jima Monument, also includes a visitor center and museum. Time your visit just right, and you may be able to visit with an Iwo Jima survivor like Robert Bloedorn. A Milwaukee, Wis., native, Bloedorn was drafted at age 18 and served for 26 months. He was in the 9th Marine Regiment, 3rd Marine Division. Bloedorn has volunteered at the Iwo Jima Monument Museum in Harlingen for 20 years. “People want to know stuff,” Bloedorn says. “I’m the guy to ask.” He serves as a living bridge to a time in history that’s shaped the present and future of the United States. The 130-ton monument is open to the public on the grounds of the Marine Military Academy in Harlingen each day from sunup to sundown. The American flag — 12 feet by 9 feet — flutters atop a flagpole that brings the height of the monument to 105 feet. It’s
Harlingen. There, it was reassembled and lifted onto a granite base. On April 16, 1982, the monument was dedicated in its new home, on the grounds of the Marine Military Academy in Harlingen. One of the six Marines who raised the flag was 20-year-old Corporal Harlan Block. He is, in fact, the soldier at the forefront who is seen thrusting the flag pole into the lava rock. Block died in action on Iwo Jima on March 1, 1945, just six days after the flag raising. He was buried on Iwo Jima, then reinterred in Weslaco, Texas. In 1995 his body was moved to Harlingen, where he’s buried near the base of the Iwo Jima Monument on the grounds of the Marine Military Academy.
GROUNDBREAKING: (from top) Robert Bloedorn, 9th Marine Regiment and an Iwo Jima survivor, is a volunteer at the Iwo Jima Visitor Center at the Marine Military Academy; Harlon H. Block of Weslaco, Texas, was 18 years old in 1943 when he enlisted in the Marine Corps. As a member of the 2nd Battalion, 28th Marines, his company was one of the first ashore on Feb. 19, 1945, when allied forces stormed the Pacific on Iwo Jima. Corporal Block is the Marine seen at the base of the flagpole, pushing it into the volcanic rock.
illuminated at night. The soldiers are 32 feet tall and the monument sits on a Brazilian black granite base that measures 60 feet by 40 feet. To put Iwo Jima and the importance of this monument into context, of the 80 Marines who received Medals of Honor during World War II, 22 earned their medals at Iwo Jima. Iwo Jima was epic in a war that was epic. WIN T E R 2 0 1 8 /’1 9
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CROWN JEWEL: (from top) Entrance to the James Avery Headquarters in Kerrville; the site’s picturesque grounds.
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Charmed Life KERRVILLE, in the Hill Country, is known for its beautiful landscapes, galleries, boutiques and rivers. But the town also has a special place that brings handcrafted jewelry lovers in by the droves: the James Avery Headquarters. The relationship between the work of the craftsman and the individual who wears his designs inspires many to make the trip to Kerrville. Avery’s goal from the beginning was to make jewelry that holds meaning for both him and his customer, and, based on the company’s
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JILL CAMPBELL JORDAN
One example of James Avery’s spirit of giving was his ability to pick the perfect gifts for his loved ones. His granddaughter, Lindsey Avery Tognietti, manager of Strategic Initiatives at James Avery Artisan Jewelry, recalls one of her favorite memories of her grandfather. “He came to the closing ceremonies at my summer camp, where campers were recognized for their accomplishments and growth during the term. I received the Spirit Stick award at camp, and I wrote to him during the term to let him know. To my surprise, at camp closing he came and brought a Spirit Stick charm that he designed and made for me. It was the company’s line for years, and I’m still proud when I see the charm and remember his supportive and giving character.”
success, he was able to strike a chord in the hearts of many. In 1954 he started his business making jewelry in his Kerrville garage, and by 1957 he had a Christian jewelry catalogue. From this modest beginning the business grew in popularity, and his craftsmanship was so highly esteemed he was commissioned by the Archdiocese of San Antonio to create four vessels for Pope John Paul II to use during the Mass he held in San Antonio in 1987. The James Avery Retail Store & Headquarters is
James Avery Visitor Center & Store 145 Avery Rd. N. Kerrville, TX 78028 (830) 895-6800 jamesavery.com
HOURS
Mon.–Sat. 9 am–6 pm Sun. 12–6 pm
VISIT KERRVILLE
kerrvilletexascvb.com
KERRVILLE
HILL COUNTRY TRAIL REGION
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PHOTOS COURTESY JAMESAVERY.COM
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The James Avery retail store is a gem in Kerrville
GRAND DESIGN: After James Avery’s passing, the City of Kerrville honored him by dedicating and renaming a sculpture he designed and created. The sculpture, “A Mother’s Love,” was erected in 2012 in downtown Kerrville and has been renamed the “James Avery Memorial.” Pictured is Chris Avery and Lindsey Avery Tognietti, holding the banner that reads, “Giving is what it’s all about.”
COURTESY JJAMESAVErY.COM
are his charms, which women have had dangling from their writsts for generations. Many young women growing up in Texas receive a James Avery bracelet accompanied by a single charm that has significance to their lives.
The bracelet with its charms tells the story of the one who wears it. The charms are reminders of the people who gave them and the significance of life events, and the adding of charms continues throughout a lifetime. Each piece is more than just a pair of earrings or a necklace — it’s a personal expression of an individual’s spirit. It becomes an heirloom handed down from one loved one to another. Kerrville is a great Hill Country retreat and a place to continue the James Avery tradition in your family — or to start a tradition of your own.
set in a tranquil countryside befitting the designer himself; you might even be welcomed by some of the wildlife that call the campus home. Visitors are invited to take time to relax and enjoy the parklike atmosphere. It’s quite a treat after spending time on the road. The Visitor Center is comprised of six exhibit areas that detail the history of how the company began in Avery’s garage in 1954 and grew into what it is today. It houses some of the iconic pieces from Avery’s workshop that can’t be seen in the stores. One highlight is being able to view craftsmen at work making James Avery creations. A banner hangs in the Center reading, “Giving is what it is all about,” the motto Avery lived by. His giving spirit didn’t go unnoticed by the town he called home. After his passing, the City of Kerrville honored him by dedicating and renaming a sculpture he designed and created. Now, the sculpture, “A Mother’s Love,” which was erected in 2012 in downtown Kerrville, is named the “James Avery Memorial.” After being immersed in the culture that is the James Avery craftsman, it’s time to hit the retail store. The beautiful store draws in the shopper, who’s greeted by a talented staff willing to guide them to the perfect pieces of jewelry to suit their style or to get them out of their comfort zone. One of the most popular of his designs WIN T E R 2 0 1 8 /’1 9
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CAPTIVATING: The Donley County courthouse, completed in 1891 and restored in 2003, is now the oldest functioning courthouse in the Panhandle. No two sides of the building are alike.
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Sobriety and Sainthood Clarendon — the Saints’ Roost of the Panhandle BARBARA BRANNON
Panhandle drew in-laws and “OUR COLONISTS and Saints’ Roost Museum 610 E. Harrington St. other family members into the Villagers, having no whisky Clarendon, TX 79226 on which to wast[e] time and enterprise, which he named (806) 874-2746 saintsroostmuseum.com Clarendon for (some say) his taxation,” read the first issue of HOURS the Clarendon News on June 1, Canadian-born wife, Clara, or Tues.–Sat. 10 am–5 pm 1878, “will have no trouble in (closed for lunch 12:30–1:30 pm) (more likely) the English city keeping closely up with every to which his financial backers Historic Donley County public improvement neceshad ties. Courthouse The British-based sary.” 300 Sully St. Clarendon, TX 79226 Clarendon Land and The monthly newspaper Investment Company infused spread the vision of Methodist VISIT CLARENDON capital into the project in spring minister Lewis Henry Carhart, clarendontx.com 1878, and a townsite was swifta New York native who found himself in charge of a North Texas church ly platted with lots sold to clean-minded during Reconstruction. His enthusiasm Easterners and Midwesterners. Compared for establishing a Christian colony in the to frontier towns like Mobeetie and Tascosa
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ON A MISSION: “Christianity, Education, Temperance, Civilization — Westward” became the motto of the Clarendon News in 1879. The newspaper, digitized in the Southwest Collection of Texas Tech University, is still in circulation as the Clarendon Enterprise.
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and the rowdier life on the surrounding range. Chief among the museum’s exhibits are artifacts and documents related to the Goodnights and the Adairs; to Native American heritage of the area; and to the authentic lifeways of the prairie. One of the museum’s most fascinating and important collections consists of the drawings, prints and cards created by renowned Western artist Harold Dow Bugbee, whose father ranched in Donley County. The museum hosts the annual Charles Goodnight Chuck Wagon Cookoff each September. Clarendon wasn’t without its sinners, either, as the last legal hanging in the Panhandle took place there June 3, 1910, when one G. R. Miller was executed for the second of two murders committed in a
crime spree the previous year. These days travelers can wet their whistle at a few dining establishments such as JD’s Steakout or even Jinda Cafe, which specializes in Thai cuisine, both on the main drag, West 2nd Street. Donley County legalized alcohol countywide in 2013, when the first countywide measure was added to the ballot since 1902. If Sunday services are more your cup of tea, however, you can still worship with the Baptists, the Methodists, the Catholics, the Nazarenes, the Episcopalians, the Church of Christ or several nonsectarian groups. Just don’t go looking for the original Saints’ Roost — the townsite was thoroughly dunked by the creation of Greenbelt Reservoir in 1968, and it rests today beneath the popular recreational lake.
BARBARA BRANNON / TEXAS PLAINS TRAIL
FINE LIVING ON THE PRAIRIE: The parlor of the Saints’ Roost Museum was once the waiting room of the Adair Hospital. The portrait of founder Cornelia Adair hangs over the Victorian mantel.
with wilder reputations, the church-going, teetotaling Clarendon citizens earned their community the nickname of “Saints’ Roost.” Clarendon prospered, with sufficient building supplies freighted in to construct not only homes but stores, hotels, a meat market, a blacksmith’s shop and a doctor’s office by 1885 — and enough pulpits to hold seven Methodist preachers. Plans were made for a Methodist college. Carhart himself, though he moved to pastorates in Dallas and then Fort Worth, set up his own ranching outfit, the Quarter Circle Heart, in the newly formed Donley County. Clarendon mostly hewed to the straight and narrow even after moving lock, stock and barrel six miles south in 1887 when the Fort Worth and Denver City Railway came through. Though a few saloons and gambling dens briefly took root, they were razed to make way for the Methodist-affiliated Clarendon College in 1898. By 1910 Cornelia Adair, widow of the man who had backed Charles Goodnight in his Panhandle ranching ventures, established a hospital on the hill above Clarendon to provide medical care primarily for the JA Ranch cowboys. A strong supporter of the Episcopalian church, Cornelia Adair also funded wholesome activities in Clarendon such as the Boy Scouts and the city’s first YMCA building. Today, the Adair Hospital houses the Saints’ Roost Museum, where visitors can learn more about the “sobriety settlement” WIN T E R 2 0 1 8 /’1 9
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HIGHER CALLING: (from left) Father Matthew Tatyrek revels in the soaring frescoes above the high altar; the church entrance.
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Thanks to its parishioners’ determination, St. Peter’s in Lindsay has been a model of reconstruction
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PAUL BECKLING
its earliest days of human of incense had barely begun to penetrate habitation, appeared as a bright horizon to the interior when the climate of Texas, those seeking new opportunities or a second which respects neither the profound nor the chance. This is especially true of German profane, struck. At the end of May 1917 a immigrants who came in great numbers tornado broadsided St Peter’s, splintering all in the nineteenth century to central and but the apse, all three altars, and the façade southeastern parts of the state. Then there and steeple. were those who followed Anton Parishioners who’d comFlusche to settle near the Red St. Peter’s Catholic pleted one house of worship River. They named their town Church of Lindsay wasted little time getting anoth424 Main St. Lindsay in honor of a Gainesville er underway. Building materials Lindsay, TX 76250 (940) 668-7609 judge who bankrolled their settlewere salvaged from the church stpeterlindsay.org ment and donated land for a and from a recent fire at the church, a small version of which VISIT GAINESVILLE courthouse in Gainesville. With gainesvillecofc.com was ready for Easter 1892. the approval of their incredu By 1899 a regular pastor, Fr. lous bishop in hand, the citizens John Troxler, O.S.B., was assigned, and a of Lindsay set about erecting the beaumuch larger church was begun. The new St. tiful Romanesque building we see today. Peter’s was completed in 1903. The scent Whenever time could be spared from farm
TEXAS HAS, from
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DON’T MISS Dieter Brothers Restaurant 401 E. Hwy 82 Lindsay, TX 76250 (940) 665-5253 dieterbrosbbq.com Smokehouse BBQ 307 U.S. Hwy 82 Lindsay, TX 76250 (940) 665-9052 smokehousebbqlindsay.com
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PAUL BECKLING
“Painted Church”
PAUL BECKLING
labors, the parishioners spent that time on rebuilding. In fall 1918, one year after the devastating tornado, the new church was finished. Nature’s next assault was less spectacular but far more costly. Falling plaster in 2005 revealed extensive water damage from an undetected roof leak. This repair set the parish back nearly $4 million, but now St. Peter’s radiates inspiration. In its painted ceilings and walls, its radiant stained glass windows, its statuary and its majestic high altar, one can readily sense an evocation of the divine in artistic perfection. The Painted Churches in the Schulenburg area are justly famous for their artwork, and St. Peter’s rightly deserves inclusion in that constellation. “Painted” churches refers to those houses of worship built primarily by Czech and German immigrants in the 1830s through the early 1900s. With limited resources, these early settlers designed and painted the walls, altars and arches in colorful patterns and images, which reminded them of the ornate Gothic churches of their homelands. At St. Peter’s, most of the original painting was done by Swiss artist Friedolin Fuchs; Dr. Matthias Zell painted four panels depicting St. Benedict and St. Boniface. For the most recent renovation, Darrel Mayo created stencils from the original work to execute exact copies of the originals. But at St. Peter’s, the church building is only part of a whole. A rather surprising feature of the layout is the presence of several small chapels built and maintained by individual families. The following Four Wayside Chapels were all built around 1913: the Chapel of Holy Agony; the Ecce Homo Chapel; the Dolorous Chapel; and the Holy Sepulchre Chapel. On the Feast of Corpus Christi, it’s tradition for the entire parish to participate in a procession to each of the chapels, which are opened and decorated with candles and flowers. As in the old countries, Lindsay seems to cluster about St. Peter’s large brick plaza. The descendants of many of the original families are still seen in the pews on Sundays and Holy Days. St. Peter’s Church isn’t a museum but the heart of a vibrant Texas community. “This is a community very proud of its heritage,” pastor Fr. Matthew Tatyrek says, “and striving to preserve its faith.”
RELIGIOUS ARTIFACTS: Ceiling detail above the high altar
Timothy Phillips is a semi-retired clinical scientist and living historian from Taylor County. Paul Beckling makes his living as a software engineer and enjoys history and photography. WIN T E R 2 0 1 8 /’1 9
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LOCAL CITY LIGHTS
The “Lady in Blue” Celebration
The Mysterious Lady in Blue
As legend has it, the first missionary effort in Texas, in present-day San Angelo, was aided by a Spanish nun who never left her monastery
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walking across the barren Southwest desert of Texas and New Mexico, approximately 12 Jumano Indian capitanes arrived at Isleta, N.M., carrying a cross covered in wildflowers. Their steps were hesitant and silent as they approached the mission. The Indians had made
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The celebration included a musical ballet with orchestra, a summit of international speakers, including Father Stefano Ceechin and Victor Mancilla , the California producer and director of the documentary The Needle and The Thread, whose premier will be held in San Angelo this winter. The weekend culminated with the spectacular unveiling of the 14-foot, 2,500-pound bronze statues of the Lady in Blue handing a cross to a Jumano girl (at left) and a Jumano brave sculpted by internationally known artist Vic Payne of Wyoming (oppostie page). The statues are near the bank of the Concho River, the very river where 2,000 Jumano Indians were baptized after the arrival in the 1600s of two Franciscan priests and 12 Jumano capitanos.
GUS CLEMENS
this long and torturous journey from their homeland six times. All six had failed. For this trip, however, their beloved “Lady in Blue” had assured them that brown-robed Franciscan padres had arrived from Spain through Mexico, and she directed the Indians to
ask the padres to come to their main camping ground and baptize their people. The sight of the Indians carrying a Christian cross and requesting baptism astounded the Franciscans…perhaps even frightened them. Had the French “beaten” them to the
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discoversanangelo.com
PHOTOS COURTESY THE PHOTO STUDIO/SAN ANGELO
In 2018, nearly 400 years after San Angelo witnessed the first missionary effort in Texas, a group of volunteers organized the ninth and largest “Lady in Blue” celebration called the Historic Beginnings of San Angelo. There were no hesitant or silent steps … only confidence and enthusiasm toward their beloved Maria, their Lady in Blue who’s now been named, by Father Stefano Ceechin of Rome, “the first North American woman evangelist.” At the three-day celebration in May 2018, there were no longer 12 capitanes but many Jumano descendants and hundreds of spectators from across the United States, Canada, Mexico and Europe. San Angelo gathered to give homage to the Lady in Blue, who brought Christianity to the Southwest, as well as gratitude to the Jumanos who embraced her message.
astonished to learn that she wore a sky-blue cape when she went outdoors. When Fra Alonzo asked Sor Maria where she learned to speak the Jumano languages, she reportedly replied, “I didn’t. I simply spoke to them — and God let us understand one another.” The appearances ceased after Fra Alonzo told Sor Maria of his contacts with the Jumanos. Sor Maria then said, “My work with my beloved Jumanos is finished.” Sister Maria died in 1665, and her incorrupt body can still be viewed at the convent where she lived and from where she “journeyed” to the Americas.
Jumano tradition relates that as Sor Maria was leaving on her final visit, wherever her blue cape touched the ground, bluebonnets sprang up to forever grace the Texas countryside. A fourth-generation Texan, Helen Lowenfield “Tilly” Chandler is known for her work in education, diversity, civic pride, art museums and historical celebrations. Gus Clemens is a writer and producer of books, owns a marketing communications company and writes a newspaper wine column published nationwide.
COURTESY THE PHOTO STUDIO/SAN ANGELO
NOBLE ART: Sculpture of a Jumano Indian by renowned artist Vic Payne. The Jumanos were known as hunters and traders.
Southwest? If not the French, then who’d catechized these Indians? The Jumanos insisted they’d never seen a white man, and that their knowledge was taught to their tribe by the beautiful, young lady wearing a brilliant blue cape. When the Jumanos led the Spanish priests to one of their central camping grounds, they arrived at the Concho River confluence area at presentday San Angelo. Over 2,000 Jumanos were baptized in the first weeks. Thus, San Angelo’s place in Texas history is secure as the site of the first missionary effort in the state — more than 45 years before El Paso, more than 80 years before San Antonio. In the early 1600s, this mysterious woman, dressed in a flowing blue cape, tended to the sick, comforted the afflicted and, most importantly, taught indigenous people about Jesus. One missionary, Fra Alonzo de Benavides, knew of a young cloistered nun in the Spanish village of Agreda, north of Madrid. Sor María de Jesús de Agreda reportedly lapsed into deep trances while in prayer and described visits to the New World, where she taught the natives. She told visitors she made more than 500 such spiritual visits, though she in fact never left her monastery in Agreda, Spain, during her lifetime. Upon returning to Spain, Fra Alonzo questioned Sor Maria at length and was amazed at her detailed descriptions of the lands she’d never seen in person. He was also WIN T E R 2 0 1 8 /’1 9
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CITY LIGHTS
HEROIC FIGURES: State of Texas Firefighter Memorial at Shelton Plaza, designed and sculpted by Beaumont native Ron Petitt. The memorial’s two bronze firefighters stand more than 6 feet tall and weigh 350 to 400 pounds each.
Texas Energy Museum 600 Main St. Beaumont, TX 77701 (409) 833-5100 texasenergymuseum.org
Edison Museum 350 Pine St. Beaumont, TX 77701 (409) 981-3089 edisonmuseum.org
Fire Museum of Texas 400 Walnut St. Beaumont, TX 77701 (409) 880-3927 firemuseumoftexas.org
VISIT BEAUMONT beaumontcvb.com
A Gusher of Information
Three attractions make a stop in the Beaumont Museum District a worthwhile venture
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5550 Jimmy Simmons Blvd. Beaumont, TX 77701 (409) 880-1750 spindletop.org
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Tue.–Sat. 10 am–5 pm Sun. 1–5 pm
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District alone is worth getting off IH-10 for a look. Here are three downtown attractions that are within easy walking distance of each other. A stop at the Texas Energy Museum provides the opportunity to understand the history of the oil industry as well as the inner workings of the critical industrial and transportation infrastructure that centers on the upper Texas coast. The museum is filled with high-tech exhibits that tell oil
industry/energy stories from unique perspectives. “The Beaumont/Port Arthur area is one of the largest refining regions in the United States,” says executive director Ryan Smith. “The support, knowledge and encouragement the museum receives from the petroleum industry is critical to its success. We talk about the refining industry but also about environmental issues and renewable energy. For instance, the exhibit up right now is about wind energy. And we talk to
While in Beaumont, the SpindletopGladys City Boomtown Museum associated with Lamar University isn’t to be missed. Gladys City was reconstructed based on photographic evidence; the buildings are all patterned after buildings that were in Spindletop during the early 1900s oil boom. Many of the artifacts used to furnish the exhibits are from the time of the boom.
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since Beaumont was established on the Neches River in the nineteenth century. An economy that once focused on the intermodal connection of railroads and ocean-going ships transporting rice, lumber and cotton was transformed with the 1901 Spindletop oil gusher. Beaumont grew rapidly in population and wealth, which is still reflected in a downtown that’s clearly been nurtured and sustained by the community over time. The downtown Museum
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COURTESY TEXAS ENERGY MUSEUM
IN THE PIPELINE: The Unlocking the Energy of Oil exhibit at the Texas Energy Musuem takes visitors through the components of refineries from the outside, while an animated exhibit provides a unique perspective by following petroleum through an inside-the-pipe view of how crude oil is converted into gasoline.
kids about how the energy sector needed for the lifestyle we’ve come to know and enjoy must be balanced against finite resources and environmental concerns. Everything in this museum relates to science — geology, petroleum formation, drilling technology and chemistry. We encourage students to think about issues in science and engineering while potentially considering careers in the field.” Just up the street from the Energy Museum (and the adjacent Art Museum of Southeast Texas) is the Texas Fire Museum. It’s housed on the first floor of the 1927 Central Fire Station and isn’t hard to find — just look for a 24-foot-tall fire hydrant with a Dalmation painted pattern. It was created by Walt Disney’s Home Video division to promote the re-release of the animated film 101 Dalmatians. Inside the fire station is a remarkable collection of fire apparatus that illustrates the story of firefighting from the 1850s to the present. Just a block away, tucked behind the Edison Plaza Building, is the Travis Street Substation built by the Gulf States Utilities Company in 1929. Historic in itself, the building houses the Edison Museum. This small space includes rare artifacts and interactive exhibits that recount the story of Thomas Alva Edison, generally recognized as the greatest American inventor. Among his inventions and innovations were the phonograph, a working light bulb and motion pictures. An exhibit tells the great Edison story about creating the Pearl Street Power Station in New York, the world’s first electrical power station, which demonstrated the viability of providing power on a broad scale.
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CITY LIGHTS
SMALL BLESSINGS: Familes left their farms on Saturday and journeyed to town, where they resided in tiny, functional houses.
Sunday Houses
Nineteenth-century farmers built small structures in Fredericksburg that made weekend worship possible Hill Country region of central Texas, Fredericksburg’s townscape remains decorated with reminders from the German settlers of the mid-1800s who developed the area. In a state famous for everything being bigger, one may be pleasantly surprised to discover small family homes, aptly called Sunday Houses, that offer a glimpse of what it was like for churchgoing German immigrants of the day.
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Following the Texas Unfortunately,the farmland Revolution, land agents from given to German settlers was the state traveled to Germany located too far out of the center to entice farmers of town — some 20 to move with their For a self-guided walking tour miles — to make the Sunday Houses, pick up daily journey out to families to fill aofmap at the Fredericksburg the vast acreage, Chamber of Commerce on the farms. So settlers their hoping to develop East Austin Street. To view one established of the first Sunday Houses a prosperous built, main residences out visit the Weber Sunday economy. Upon House on the grounds of the on the land they arrival, families Pioneer Museum. It’s an excel- tended to during received 10-acre lent example of settler life. the week. But the parcels of land to lack of churches farm, along with a lot located in posed an issue for devout town to build a house. families. As such, each weekend
Pioneer Museum
325 W. Main St. Fredericksburg, TX 78624 (830) 990-8441 pioneermuseum.net
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Mon.–Sat. 10 am–5 pm
VISIT FREDERICKSBURG visitfredericksburgtx.com
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FROM LEFT: DARYL WHITWORTH; NANCY AND TOM SNYDER
farmers and their loved ones would make the journey from the isolated farmland into town to attend Sunday church service. The journey would be too tedious to travel to and from the city in a single day, so traveling families faced an issue they needed to resolve. The solution to their predicament was to build small dwellings on the lots given to them when they immigrated to the area. After the work week, families would come to town, stay in the small houses and attend church. After service on Sunday, families and friends would gather in the houses to have a traditional dinner then return back to the farmland for the work week. The small dwellings became known, appropriately, as Sunday Houses. The custom of building and maintaining Sunday Houses survived until the 1920s, when roadways became improved, making travel to the city from the countryside much easier for families. Some houses have since been demolished or expanded upon; but a number of them still remain and have been restored to their original state. Many houses are still lived in by family members of the original settlers. With their quintessential front porches and simple design, the Sunday Houses remain a major draw for visitors to Fredericksburg. Many Sunday houses are located in the historic district, within walking distance from downtown. The majority of the houses are now Bed & Breakfast establishments that one can rent for a small getaway. A one-and-one-half hour drive west of Austin, Fredericksburg showcases the deeply rooted German heritage of the Hill Country region. Ingenuity and devotion to faith brought Sunday Houses into existence, while pride and dedication keep many of the original structures alive today for people from all around to visit and enjoy. WIN T E R 2 0 1 8 /’1 9
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from the Alamo’s front doors stands an equally proud, majestic structure — whose walls tell not the story of folk heroes or conquistadors but of the countless generations of faceless, faithful Texans who — for nearly three centuries — have made San Antonio their home. As far as historical landmarks go, the Cathedral of San Fernando is unique. Unlike the crowded plaza of the Alamo or the quiet fields of former Spanish missions, the Cathedral offers its visitors something beyond a brief, albeit meaningful, snapshot into our AUTHENTIC PLACE state’s proud history. At the Cathedral of San Fernando, history, rather than being passively observed, is made every day by parishioners and The oldest cathedral in the country — visitors alike. the Cathedral of San Fernando — is central to Truly more than the lives of its people, both religious andand secular. Churches, monasteries just the city’s religious And at night, it comes alive with center, the Cathedral other attractions reflect Indiana’s San Antonio: The Saga of San Fernando has long (the state’s) religious roots offered a sense of identity to by TREY GUTIERREZ both San Antonio’s pious and lay populations. “Being the oldest cathedral in the United States,there’s a long-standing sense of history there, sure.” says Timothy Matovina, a religious scholar who’s spent a great deal of his professional career observing the continuing history of San Fernando and her faithful parishioners. “It’s not just a history, though — it’s a living legacy, a tradition. Its people know that San Fernando is where their rituals, their devotions, their communal life has been celebrated and valued for many years.” It’s easy to see why generations of San Antonians find such a comforting sense of tradition in San Fernando, especially when one considers how deeply rooted the Cathedral is in Texas history. Construction on what would ultimately become San Fernando Cathedral began in 1738, when 56 immigrants from the Spanish-held Canary Islands established Texas’ first organized civil government, the town of San Fernando — named for the future King of Spain, Ferdinand VI. Built upon the exact geographical center of modern day San Antonio, the Cathedral would bear witness to crucial events of the Texas revolution. In 1831, frontiersman James Bowie married Ursula De Veramendi within the Cathedral’s walls. Not five years later, Bowie would witness Mexican General Antonio Lopez
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the seat of its current archbishop, Gustavo GarciaSiller. As it was in the 18th century, the modern-day religious leaders of San Fernando remain steadfast in their mission of sharing the word of God with San Antonio’s religious population. One group that’s been historically receptive to the church’s mission is San Antonio’s Latino population. As former San Fernando rector Virgilio P. Elizondo wrote in the 1998 book San Fernando: Soul of the City — which he co-authored with Matovina — “In the past Tejanos were often denied entrance to many of the institutions of a city, state and nation, including Catholic churches. San Fernando has always been a parish home where Tejanos or Mexicanos have never had to explain who they are, why they are the way they are, or why they worship the way they do.” It’s this feeling of belonging that’s given San Fernando a reputation as a place where tradition is not only
COUORTESY SAN FERNANDO CATHEDRAL
SERVICE CENTER: The San Fernando Cathedral (above), restored in 1873 (opposite page, top), towers with history and lore at the heart of the city’s center. In addition to religious services, the cathedral hosts free Musical Evenings (opposite page, bottom), featuring unique collaborations.
de Santa Anna raise the symbolic red flag of “No Mercy” from the Cathedral’s bell tower — shortly before the ill-fated Battle of the Alamo. After the revolution, renovations began on the now dilapidated church. Carried out by architect Francois P. Giraud in 1861, these renovations included the construction of an extensive Gothic revival-style nave around the original colonial church, giving the Cathedral its current, European-influenced design. Today, the walls of the original 1738 colonial church form the Cathedral’s sanctuary, bestowing upon San Fernando the title of oldest continuously operated Cathedral in the United States. Long since passed are the days of frontier revolution; at the end of the day, historic or not, San Fernando is still a Catholic institution — and an important one at that.Today San Fernando serves as the San Antonio Archdiocese’s central church, and
PHOTOS COURTESY SAN FERNANDO CATHEDRAL
something to adhere to but to celebrate as well. In addition to hosting Spanish language mass, the influence of its Latino parishioners can be readily found in the many extravagant celebrations held annually. “Latinos have a certain sense of joy connected with their coming together in worship” says Matovina. “San Fernando is a Catholic Latino faith community living out its traditions. Some things may change, but the deeper underlying spirit of it is still there.” Traditions that have been adhered to for generations continue to draw thousands to the center of San Antonio. Events such as the Serenata a la Virgen de Guadalupe, San Fernando’s annual musical tribute to the virgin Mary, attract faithful parishioners to the Cathedral, while celebrations like Las Posadas — the church’s annual Christmas pageant — and the Easter Passion Play see hundreds of San Fernando’s
parishioners spill into the streets of downtown San Antonio, recreating the birth and death of Jesus, respectively, for all to witness. “These celebrations have gained popularity because of the Hispanic population who’ve found their roots here,” says San Fernando’s director of religious education, Lupita Mandujano. Mandujano isn’t speaking just as an observer but as a living example of the church’s continuing tradition. Having immigrated to San Antonio from Mexico as a child, Mandujano has been a lifelong parishioner of San Fernando. It was during one fateful Las Posadas pageant that Mandujano — portraying the role of the virgin Mary — met her husband Mario, who, fittingly, played the role of Joseph. Years later, Mandujano would reprise the role of Mary in San Fernando’s Easter Passion Play, this time alongside her grown son, who portrayed Jesus. “It’s the language of tradition that keeps San Fernando alive,” Mandujano says. “It’s like my second home.” This seemingly effortless ability to attract devout Latino parishioners of all ages serves as a reflection of the Cathedral’s history of inclusiveness and acceptance. Though devoutly Catholic, San Fernando’s leaders have long made it their mission to provide a sense of belonging to all peoples of San Antonio. “San Fernando today is a 300-year synthesis
“San Fernando has always been a parish home where Tejanos or Mexicanos have never had to explain who they are, why they are the way they are, or why they worship the way they do.” WIN T E R 2 0 1 8 /’1 9
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Everything had to line up absolutely perfectly,” says Jane Pauley-Flores, executive director of the Main Plaza Conservancy — the nonprofit responsible for bringing Richemont’s vision to life. “When the sound is coming at you, and you’re seeing these incredible visuals, you truly feel like you’re one with the entire production.” Needless to say, creating this one-of-a-kind experience wasn’t a simple undertaking for anyone involved. For the Main Plaza Conservancy, securing an artist as notable as Richemont for this project was a long shot, to say the least. “It was just so unusual. We were bringing the first piece of its kind to the United States,” says Pauley-Flores, “Xavier has works all around the world. Countries and governments hire him. And here was just a simple small nonprofit down in the center of San Antonio trying to achieve what whole countries were achieving.” Luckily for the Conservancy’s board of directors, Richemont — who has long had an interest in American history — was receptive to the idea, though complications for the Conservancy didn’t stop there. “It’s one thing to raise $50,000, because that’s a lot and it’s hard to do. But to raise over a million dollars? That’s staggering. It ultimately took the whole two years that Xavier was creating to raise that money.” While Pauley-Flores and her board got to work securing the necessary funds, as well as Archbishop Gustavo Garcia-Siller’s blessing to present The Saga on the church’s facade, Richemont began his creative process. Incredible visual and audio elements aside, perhaps the most astounding aspect of The Saga is the amount of research that went into every single frame. Long before The Saga’s first sketches were created, Richemont undertook a monumental research process in order to acquaint himself with San Antonio’s rich history. “To truly understand another person is to spend time with him or her,” says Richemont, speaking symbolically, “You have to be humble. You have to listen very carefully to the stories people tell you. ” During the course of his research, Richemont would visit constantly with San Fernando’s Archbishop and rector, as well as countless other religious and historical scholars. In addition to these meetings, Richemont would spend hours visiting the city’s museums and historical missions. “To learn that much took me quite a few trips,” he explains. “I flew from Paris to San Antonio maybe six times.” Needless to say, Richemont’s research process paid off. Guiding audiences on a visual journey from the early, pre-colonial days of Texas to modern times, Richemont has jam-packed The Saga with so many historical details that audiences often find themselves still picking out subtleties on their third or fourth viewing. Hundreds of flags, portraits and structures fly across the Cathedral’s face during The Saga, as centuries of Texas history are condensed into less than half an hour. For an artist as precise as Richemont, every detail of The Saga is intentional, no matter how small. “I’ve
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Richemont would visit constantly with San Fernando’s Archbishop and rector, as well as countless other religious and historical scholars.
of coming together,” says Matovina. “People bring their own unique richness that together makes up a whole greater than the sum of its parts.” This synthesis is perhaps most apparent in the Cathedral’s annual Interfaith Thanksgiving Service. At this decades-old celebration, it’s not uncommon that Buddhist chants, Muslim calls to prayer, traditional Native American ritual dances and performances by African American gospel choirs are all observed under one roof. “We bring in all the traditions and cultures. It’s necessary to recognize that we’re all one humanity,” says Father Victor Valdez, current rector of San Fernando parish. “Through the church’s teachings, you see how God has placed gifts in all faiths. We use that as growth, to help mature in our own faith as well.” While it’s easy to understand why San Fernando is famous among San Antonio’s diverse citizens, in recent decades, due in part to the invention of new kinds of communication technology, the prominence of San Fernando has been extended far beyond the city limits. In 1983, the church began televising its masses on the Spanish-language network Univision, a practice that continues today. “That’s what put us on the map, even more so than before,” says Mandujano. “People wanted to see the Cathedral for themselves. Mass began to grow, but so did the Passion Play, which was also televised.” With masses being broadcasted to viewers across many states and even other countries, San Fernando was effectively transformed overnight into a point of Catholic pilgrimage. “People loved it,” says Matovina. “Parishioners were always proud of the Cathedral, but to have San Fernando become a place where mass went out to the sick, the needy, people without Spanish mass in rural areas — it was a tremendous source of pride for the parishioners to celebrate the richness of their traditions with people from so many other places.” Its televised mass made the Cathedral a popular destination among Catholics, but it would be the groundbreaking work of one internationally renowned visual artist who’d solidify San Fernando’s status as one of world’s most intriguing tourist destinations. On June 15, 2014, an excited crowd of proud San Antonians gathered at the foot of the San Fernando Cathedral. It was here that acclaimed French painter Xavier de Richemont unveiled his latest creation, San Antonio: The Saga — a 24-minute “video painting” recounting the story of San Antonio’s history — projected onto the front facade of the Cathedral. A sensory experience that must be seen to be believed,San Antonio:The Saga combines striking visuals with intricately coordinated sound design to bring the story of Texas to life. Making the most of its sacred canvas, the projection’s brilliantly colorful patterns and historical images dance in perfect unison around and on top of the Cathedral’s intricate architecture —injecting life and rhythm into the Cathedral’s deeply detailed features. “Xavier has designed the artwork to actually fit every nook and cranny of the Cathedral.
PHOTOS COURTESY MYSANANTONIO.COM
gotten so many emails saying, ‘I recognize this face in The Saga, but I can’t put a name to it. Can you tell me who it is?’” says Pauley-Flores. “All those questions coming in resulted in us actually publishing a coffee table book breaking down The Saga slide by side—it’s that detailed.” Since its premiere in 2014, The Saga has received numerous accolades, including being named “Best of the City” by San Antonio Magazine. “We have people not only coming from all over the country,” says Pauley-Flores, “but because of our international recognition and awards, people will call my office
from other countries, saying they’re planning their entire vacation around seeing The Saga.” The Saga continues to show three times a night, four nights a week, on San Fernando’s facade — completely free and open to the public — and will continue to do so until at least 2024. Maintaining the parish of a church that draws hundreds of visitors daily, for both religious and non-religious reasons, may seem like a daunting undertaking. Fortunately, for the Cathedral’s leadership, balancing the religious and the secular is one of San Fernando’s many long-standing traditions. “During mass we’ll have lots of people come by who are just visiting. We’ll have our ushers invite them in, to stay and witness the mass,” says Father Valdez. “I’m always telling people to come see The Saga. I’ll even push it! Part of building up spirituality includes making that connection with the secular. I’m constantly asking myself, ‘How can we use these attractions to help people?’” In addition to making these connections, the leaders of San Fernando also continue what is perhaps the church’s most valuable tradition: providing a unified sense of identity to all of San Antonio’s people. “That’s what people like about San Fernando,” Motavina says. “Here, they feel they’re deeply rooted in something so much larger than themselves.”
STORY OF A CITY: A world-class video art installation on the facade of San Fernando Cathedral, The Saga, created by renowned French artist Xavier de Richemont, showcases a breathtaking visual journey through the history of San Antonio.
“Part of building up the spirituality includes making that connection with the secular.”
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“COME and
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A symbolic flag has represented the brazen spirit of Texas for nearly 200 years
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HE STORY OF THE “Come and to defend themselves from hostile Apaches and Take It” flag begins Oct. 2, Comanches. Mexican Corporal Casimiro De 1835, at what is now known as León and a few soldiers were sent to reclaim the Battle of Gonzales — the the cannon. first military engagement of The relationship between Texas and the Texas Revolution. Mexico during this period had always been It was the somewhat tumultuous. In the fall of 1835. Mexican President early 1820s, Mexico granted Gonzales Memorial Santa Anna had dissolved the permission to Stephen F. Austin Museum Constitution and made himself to colonize the area around the 414 Smith St. Gonzales, TX 78629 dictator. Tensions began to Brazos River for purposes of (830) 672-6350 flare between his oppressive expanding Mexican territory HOURS government and the libertyand barring the French from 10 am–12 pm; 1–5 pm minded desires of Texans Mon.–Sat.Sun. encroaching into the region. 1–5 pm and Tejanos. To suppress Texans began moving into the VISIT GONZALES the rumblings of unrest and area because of its fairly open gonzalestx.travel revolution, the Mexican military borders and plentiful amount of leaders began their quest to inexpensive land. But in 1830, quietly disarm the Texans. One of the first Mexico prohibited further immigration by U.S. actions was to retrieve a cannon lent to the citizens into the area since it feared the ideals Texan colonists at Gonzales. The famous of the Mexican government and American bronze cannon was loaned to the Gonzales immigrants differed in significant ways. Texas colonists by the Mexican government in 1831 was removed from Mexico both geographically,
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DEFINING MOMENT: Oct. 2 marks the 183rd anniversary of the Battle of Gonzales, the first military fight of the Texas Revolution in 1835. The famous flag from that Gonzales clash — a replica of which is flown at the Gonzales Memorial Museum (above) — has become a hallmark of Texas pride, and its “Come And Take It” message one of Texas’ most defining. Less than a year later, Texas would be its own republic. WIN T E R 2 0 1 8 /’1 9
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BEGINNING OF A REVOLUTION: When Mexican leader Santa Anna (top) demanded that a cannon loaned to Texians in Gonzales be retrieved, a slogan of defiance was born, inscribed on a makeshift flag (above). Following the resulting Battle of Gonzales in 1835, the First Army of Texas Volunteers was organized by Gen. Stephen F. Austin (far right).
The Mexican troops were met by high water and a group of 18 militiamen, both of which blocked their entrance into Gonzales. Captain Castañeda asked that a message 42
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be relayed to the alcalde (mayor), Andrew Ponton, but the Texan militiamen said he’d need to wait for Ponton’s return. Castañeda and his troops set up camp a few hundred yards nearby in anticipation for Ponton’s arrival; meanwhile, Gonzales citizens called for backup from the surrounding settlements to build a stronger resistance that eventually numbered 150. “Come and Take It” was a motto adopted by the Texas rebels defending the cannon. Two days earlier, Sara Seely DeWitt and her daughter, Evaline, hastily designed and created the Old Cannon Flag, which today is known as the “Come and Take It” flag, from a wedding dress belonging to Naomi DeWitt. It depicts
Mexican troops to “Come and Take It!” The people of Texas rallied in support of the men defending the cannon. Boldly, the Texas front marched across the Guadalupe at night, preparing to attack Mexican troops the following morning. At daybreak, fog blanketed what would become the battlefield of the first contest — some say skirmish — of the Texas Revolution. With Stephen F. Austin in command of the First Army of Texas Volunteers, the cannon loaded and the “Come and Take It” flag waving high, the army of brave Texas men sprung a surprise attack on Castañeda and his troops. The Mexican side was outnumbered by manpower and firepower. On Oct. 2, the small
the small, Spanish-made cannon with a black, singular star above it and the words “Come and Take It” spanning the width of the battle flag underneath the cannon. This wasn’t just Texas’ first battle flag; it was the first lone-star flag as well. On Oct. 1, 1835, Captain Castañeda began to demand officially that the cannon be handed over, but not without numerous militiamen taunting and tantalizing the
cannon, mounted on a wheeled base, was fired during the clash between the Texan volunteer army and the Mexican troops sent by Santa Anna to retrieve the cannon. Castañeda and his troops pulled away, marking victory for the Texan side. The Battle of Gonzales, with the Come and Take it flag flying high, marks the first sign of a break between Texas colonists and the Mexican government, which would ultimately lead to the formation of the Republic of Texas less than a year later. The Come and Take It flag is a symbol from the Battle of Gonzales that’s prevailed through 183 years of Texas history. The
PHOTOS COURTESY GONZALES MEMORIAL MUSEUM
being separated by the Rio Grande, and culturally, given that Texas was made up of English-speaking colonists. Knowing that the stiff tensions between the Texans and the centralist government of Santa Anna could provoke aggression on either side, Domingo de Ugartechea enlisted the help of Captain Francisco de Castañeda and an estimated 100 Mexican cavalrymen to repossess the cannon, which had been buried in a peach orchard near the Colorado River for safety, but was retrieved shortly after and readied for battle and mounted on cart wheels. Ugartechea instructed his men to avoid open conflict if possible, but to resort to forceful removal if needed. An assembly of men left San Antonio de Béxar on Sept. 27, 1835 and arrived at the banks of the Guadalupe River opposite Gonzales two days later.
flag stood for defiance against Mexican dictatorship, and today the flag’s meaning remains rooted in Texas pride. The actual phrase “Come and Take It” can be seen throughout history during important battles around the world. The first alleged appearance of the motto dates back to a situation closely resembling the Battle of Gonzales, where King Leonidas I defied the Persian army when they tried to confiscate his army’s armaments at the Battle of Thermopylae in ancient Greece. The phrase appears again in the American Revolution when Colonel John McIntosh uttered “Come and Take It” to British forces when they attempted to take over Fort Morris in
FROM LEFT: COURTESY GONZALES MEMORIAL MUSEUM; COURTESY GONZALES INQUIRER
SHOT ACROSS THE BOW: After organization of the Texian Army of the People under Gen. Stephen F. Austin at Gonzales, the “Come and Take It” cannon was assigned to Capt. James C. Neill’s artillery company, hauled to San Antonio and used during the Siege of Bexar.
Georgia on Nov. 25, 1778. Although the slogan can be seen throughout military encounters spanning centuries, today it is synonymous with Texas’s audacious history. The defining message on the flag is one that echoes the bravado and perseverance that Texans are notorious for — rough, tough, and firm in their beliefs. When all was said and done, this battle, lasting only a few hours, forced the retreat of Mexican forces. Two Mexican soldiers died. The only Texian casualty was a man thrown from his horse who suffered a bloody nose. The Battle of Gonzales represented a final and definitive break between Texian settlers and the Mexican government. There would be no return to business as usual. Word of the battle quickly spread through the
United States, where the event (initially known merely as “the fight at Williams’ place”) was lionized as “the Lexington of Texas.” Young men flocked to Texas to join the cause of freedom. Today, one can see “Come and Take It” plastered across Texas in the form of T-shirts, replica flags, tattoos, license plates and pretty much anything else you can think of. The cannon used in the dispute can be found at the Gonzalez Memorial Museum, along with a replica of the flag used, although the whereabouts of the original Come and Take It flag is unknown. While we don’t have the original, replica flags can be found in important buildings across the state from the Bullock Texas State History Museum and the Texas State Capitol in Austin to schools like Sam Houston State University in Huntsville and the Marine Military Academy in Harlingen, along with numerous other establishments. The Come and Take It flag carries a simple slogan with deeply rooted meaning for Texans past and present. Each October, Gonzales holds a celebration called the “Come and Take It Celebration” to honor Texas’ heritage, where the first shots of the Battle of Gonzales took place. Against the odds from the beginning, the courageous men of the First Army of Texas Volunteers led by Stephen F. Austin faced the trained soldiers of the Mexican army and persevered. The people of Gonzales and those from surrounding areas that lent a helping hand stood firm in their beliefs and fought against Santa Anna’s rise to dictatorship in Mexico in favor of forming an independent republic. Defiance, ingenuity and bravery personify those involved in the Battle of Gonzales. The Come and Take It flag encapsulated the spirit of those who partook in the battle the would spark the movement for Texas independence and continues to be a symbol, above all else, of Texas itself.
Directing
HISTORY
I
F THERE’S ANYONE new to Gonzales who’s developed an affection for the history of the town, it’s Megan O’Neal, the new curator at the Gonzales Memorial Museum. O’Neal, who was born in Tulsa, Okla., and grew up in Houston, says family ties introduced her to the city of Gonzales as a child. “My grandmother is from Gonzales, and I came here to visit her when I was young,” she says. “We had several family reunions here.” In terms of education, O’Neal obtained a Master’s degree in Museum Science and Management from the University of Tulsa. “I was looking for a smaller museum that does a little bit of everything,” she says, “and I was fortunate this opportunity came up.” Although she’s been in Gonzales for just a few months, O’Neal says she can already see the potential the museum has to offer. That’s part of the reason she’s excited to be in a town like Gonzales that has so much historical significance. “Obviously the ‘Come and Take It’ cannon is a huge draw,” she says. “I had a great Texas history teacher when I was in school, and he just made everything so interesting. So I wanted to be able to teach others what I learned.” O’Neal is excited to put her own stamp on the museum. “There’s so much potential here,” she says. “I plan to change out some of the exhibits so we can provide a broader sense of appeal, eventually bringing more and more visitors to the museum.” — ROB FORD
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AUTHENTIC PERSON
M A R AT H O N MAN J.P. BRYAN, THE MAN RESPONSIBLE FOR TRANSFORMING MARATHON, TEXAS, INTO A POPULAR TOURIST DESTINATION, HAS SPENT A LIFETIME SERVING HIS INTEREST OVER SELF-INTEREST JEREMY RAY BURCHARD
TH ROGERS / FLICKR; OPPOSITE PAGE: MICHAEL STRAVATO
by
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GIVING SPIRIT: “When you get an opportunity to share with other people,” Bryan says, “it’s a far more gratifying experience.”
HUND R EDS O F T H O USA ND S of visitors trek to Texas’ famed Big Bend National Park every year. And for decades, the sleepy town of Marathon, Texas, has served as a popular entryway to the park’s gorgeous mountains and steep canyons. For the majority of that time, visitors to Marathon, the “census-designated place” at the junction of U.S. Highways 90 and 385, were inclined to not think much of it — beyond, of course, appreciating the sprawling landscapes, dark night skies and unperturbed isolation. But over the past several years, Marathon has suddenly become a destination — a last bastion of the Wild West ... living, breathing history representative of one of the world’s most romanticized periods. And Texans can largely thank 78-yearold oil baron, philanthropist and collector
serve your interest and not your self-interest.’ Union,” Bryan says, his conviction unwavI didn’t know what she was talking about at ering — and his knowledge of the subject the time, because, frankly, it didn’t seem to be certainly deep enough to back it up. “And the way she lived her life — but now I know, I think the settlement of the West is the and never were truer words spoken.” greatest single historical event in all of world It’s certainly fortuitous for the Lone Star history.” State, then, that this sixth-generation Texan’s To grasp Bryan’s affinity for and knowllifelong love interest (outside of his wife, edge of Texas’ history, you need to underMary Jon, of course) is and always has been stand the context in which it developed. preserving and celebrating “I grew up in a little town the history of the state and the Gulf Coast called “We didn’t build the on the American West. Freeport,” Bryan says. He hotel with the idea spent a great deal of time at A serial entrepreof ‘Build it and they his grandparents’ 1800s-era neur who built a fortune will come,’ because beach house, learning of throughout his 40-year I’d never heard that his family’s dense history career in the energy secphrase. But they tor, Bryan founded and ran in the region. His family didn’t come. Torch Energy Advisors tree extends all the way to after a stint in investment Not for a long time.” Stephen F. Austin, who
J.P. Bryan for that. “My mother said something to me when I was young, and the older I get, the more I’m convinced it’s the way to live your life,” says Bryan, his subtle drawl trailing his baritone rumble. “She said, ‘Son, do the things that 46
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banking. Beginning in 1966 and extending through his years even as a top executive in oil and gas, Bryan’s first passion was collecting artifacts from the American West. “I believe that we in Texas share the greatest historical heritage of any state in the
colonized Texas in the 1820s and is considered by many to be the “father” of Texas. Austin’s sister, Emily, was Bryan’s greatgreat-grandmother. Already with a strong understanding of his lineage, Bryan first attended the
COURTESY GAGE HOTEL
IMPULSE BUY: Bryan bought the Gage Hotel in Marathon for $30,000 — sight unseen. “That dadgum hotel just about broke me spiritually and financially,” he says.
PHOTOS COURTESY BRYAN MUSEUM
University of Texas at Austin to study art history before shifting to a general focus on history under legendary Texas historian H. Bailey Carroll, who directed and coedited the Handbook Of Texas. “Dr. Carroll opened my eyes to the wonders of history,” Bryan says. “He showed me that it’s not just about dates and events but about the people and their conduct, good and bad, and what had been achieved on that stretch of land.” It’s with that appreciation for the people who made history that Bryan set out to revitalize Marathon. Or at least an appreciation for one specific person initially — Henry Trost, the famed El Paso architect whose unique designs define cities across the Southwest, from Austin to Phoenix. In the late 1970s, Bryan had been looking for a place near Big Bend that was a little closer to his family’s Houston home than their 15,000-acre Chalk Draw ranch, which sits just north of the park and an hour away from Marathon. That’s when he happened upon Marathon’s Gage building, a 1926 Trost-designed structure that once served as a hotel, residence and business hub for San Antonio businessman Alfred Gage (who owned a ranch of more than half a million acres).
original plans for the building. “When my wife and I saw the historical importance of the Gage Hotel that had been designed by Trost, who is, arguably, the best architect who ever called Texas his home, we decided it was worth committing our time to,” Bryan says. Bryan and Mary Jon committed money, too, pouring millions in over the next four decades to build an upscale oasis in the heart of the Wild West. But that doesn’t mean it wasn’t a struggle. “We didn’t build the hotel with the idea of ‘Build it and they will come,’ because I’d never heard that phrase,” Bryan says, a light chuckle underscoring his tone. “But they didn’t come. Not for a long time.” Bryan had essentially resigned himself to treating the Marathon project as a charity, buying up and restoring buildings in its proximity along the way with the hopes that the community of fewer than 500 people wouldn’t “dry up and blow away like a tumbleweed.” Soon, other artists migrated to the area, opening galleries and scant but authentic upscale shopping opportunities. And at some point less than a decade ago, something just clicked. Bryan no longer had to support the hotel financially. Visitors from across the country, itching for a differ-
Fort Davis and landmarks encompassing the history of the cavalry, Buffalo Soldiers, cattle drives and all that Western romance. “But the nice thing is, the character of the place hadn’t changed,” Bryan says. “It’s still wide open country; very few billboards, very few signs of development, and still plenty of isolation. Fortunately the country has done more to change all of us than we’ve done to change it.” That’s a key distinction for Bryan, who’s spent a great deal of his life concerned with the well-being and balance of the environment. “Preservation is progress,” he says. “The worst polluter, the most destructive element in any society, is poverty, and we’re stewards of our environment. If we don’t look after it, it’s going to be destroyed. We need to be prosperous with our assets.” Nearly 600 miles east of the Gage Hotel, in Galveston, Bryan puts his money where his mouth is, as more than 70,000 artifacts from the American West sit on display in the Bryan Museum, a renovat-
Bryan paid $30,000 for the crumbling structure in 1978 without stepping foot inside, which was probably for the best, because it was in such disrepair, Bryan might’ve thought twice about it had he seen its state of dilapidation. Bryan traveled to El Paso to find the
ent kind of vacation, heard about the wideopen skies of West Texas, and Marathon offered the perfect getaway. Or, as Bryan describes it, the “long view” of the West, with the Great Comanche War Trail only a few hundred yards from the hotel, not to mention
ed 19th-century orphanage. The museum presents the largest collection of “Texana” (artifacts relating to the culture and heritage of Texas) known to man, providing a detailed and chronological account of Texas and the American West.
WESTERN FRONT: Housed in the former Galveston Orphans Home, the Bryan Museum contains artifacts from J.P. Bryan’s extraordinary lifetime collection.
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And every last bit of it belongs to J.P. Bryan. “There are people who have great collections but aren’t great collectors,” Bryan says. “They hire somebody to go out and build a great collection because they think it gives them distinction. And then there are people who collect the right things in a particular area. They have a good appreciation of it and collect the very best. And they’re the great collectors.” So does that make Bryan, who has spent a lifetime collecting and preserving Texas’ history, one of the greats? He laughs. “Well, if I’d been only a collector and not an entrepreneur, I would’ve been a better collector,” he says. “And if I had only been an entrepreneur, I’d probably be a better one of those, too.”
more than anybody who’s ever tried to sell it tant than you are personally,” he says. For to me. But you don’t want the seller to know Bryan, that cause is keeping people engaged that. You just act like you and excited about history, believe what they’re telling which he believes sits atop all Gage Hotel you.” other educational disciplines 102 NW 1st St Highway 90W Marathon, TX 79842 Bryan’s keen eye and in terms of importance. (432) 386-4205 willingness to embrace the “We have a lot of doctors VISIT MARATHON gamesmanship of collectcome into the museum and marathontexas.com ing helped him establish an say, ‘I like what I’m seeing undeniably impressive colhere, because I never cared The Bryan Museum lection. Along the way he’s much for history growing 1315 21st Street hosted it in various places, up,’” Bryan says. “That’s a Galveston, Texas 77550 (409) 632-7685 including his residences, the shame, because if you know downtown Torch Energy the history of medicine, it’s HOURS offices, and the University not going to make you a docWednesday–Sunday, 10:00 a.m.–5:00 p.m. of Texas’ Harry Ransom tor — but it will make you a (Closed Monday–Tuesday) Center. Now it’s all on disbetter one.” VISIT GALVESTON play for the world to see in Bryan pauses before galveston.com Galveston. emphasizing his point. “Any
That’s not to say there weren’t missteps along the way. Like buying a forgery of the Texas Declaration of Independence — likely created by one of Bryan’s own in-laws and sold to him by one of his closest friends and former business partners, the infamous (if not notorious) rare book collector John Holmes Jenkins. “I’ve been fooled — don’t misunderstand me,” Bryan says. “I’ve bought fakes or things I thought were better than they are. But for the most part collecting served me well. I generally back it up with a pretty decent reservoir of appreciation. There are certain things I know a lot about, almost
For Bryan, creating the museum is an exercise in being prosperous with his assets while serving his interests over his self-interest. “The shortest-lived human emotion is gratitude,” Bryan says. “You’re going down the wrong path if you’re being charitable only because you expect someone to show you gratitude. You’re going to be sorely disappointed.” Bryan speaks honestly, mentioning a handful of his charitable endeavors he’d prefer to keep private for that reason. “Don’t do something because you think it makes you more noticeable or important but because you believe the cause is more impor-
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time you understand the history of your profession, or your world, you have a better perspective on how to react and respond to it,” he says. “It’s not learn and live, it’s live and learn — and we learn from the history that was lived by others.”
PHOTOS COURTESY BRYAN MUSEUM
WESTERN HOLDINGS: The collection at the J.P. Bryan Museum in Galveston includes 20,000 rare books; more than 30,000 documents; three dozen saddles; over 250 antique firearms; several hundred spurs; a large collection of fine art, religious art, folk art and portraits; exceedingly rare maps and artifacts, such as “cowboy” chaps; Native American stone tools and arrowheads; and a Spanish mission bell.
LIFE
TRAIL DRIVE p. 50 H EATS & DRINKS p. 56 H DEEP IN THE ART p. 62 H HAPPENINGS p. 67
WENDY LITTLE / TEXAS MOUNTAIN TRAIL
Articles
of FAITH
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LIFE TRAIL DRIVE FAMILIAR RING: The Ysleta Mission’s first domed bell tower (below), built in 1891, was destroyed in a 1907 chemical fire. Since its rebuilding in 1908, the dome has endured (at left) as one of the mission’s defining architectural features.
El Paso Mission Trail
Catholic saints and native traditions mix in Texas’ only pueblo
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by
WENDY LITTLE
THIRTEEN MILES from bustling downtown
El Paso, between the Rio Grande and fastmoving Interstate 10, lies the oldest community in Texas and the seat of its oldest running government. Ysleta del Sur Pueblo, the state’s only pueblo, has been home to the Tigua (pronounced tiwa) people for more than 300 years. The Ysleta tribe welcomes visitors today to its mission churches and cultural center to learn the story of how a Puebloan community came to thrive here on the border. After leaving their homelands of Quarai Pueblo (in today’s central New Mexico) due to drought in the 1600s, the Tigua people sought refuge farther north at Isleta Pueblo. (Pueblo, meaning “town,” is a compound-
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type building where many families live together; often built of adobe, some pueblos reach four or five stories tall.) During the period of early Spanish settlement, in the late seventeenth century, Pueblo Indians in the region rose up against Spanish domination and drove out the settlers. The Spanish retreated south to Texas, but they returned with a vengeance a year later. This time some of the Indians (mostly Tigua) were captured and taken 400 miles to the area just east of modern-day El Paso. Forced into labor, the Christianized Tigua put their talents for farming and irrigation to use. By 1682 they began construction of buildings, including the Ysleta Mission, using the same techniques as they had with
El Paso Mission Trail & Visitor Center
9065 Alameda Avenue El Paso, TX 79907 (915) 851-9997 visitelpasomissiontrail.com
Ysleta Mission
131 S. Zaragoza Rd. El Paso, TX 79907 (915) 859-9848 ysletamission.org
San Elizario Presidio Chapel 1556 San Elizario Rd. San Elizario, TX 79849 (915) 851-2333 visitelpasomissiontrail.com
Socorro Mission
1328 S Nevarez Rd. Socorro, TX 79927 (915) 859-7718 visitelpasomissiontrail.com
VISIT EL PASO visitelpaso.com
FROM LEFT: WENDY LITTLE; COURTESY YSLETA MISSION
El Paso’s Ysleta Mission
LOCATED SOUTHEAST of downtown El Paso is a 9-mile historic trail linking two of the oldest continuously operated missions in the United States (Ysleta Mission and Socorro Mission) and the San Elizario Presidio Chapel. Businessmen, pioneers and the faithful have been traveling this route for over 300 years since it is part of the El Camino Real de Tierra Adentro (Royal Road of the Interior) which stretched from Mexico City to Santa Fe. Orginally built during the 1600s and 1700s, these three Texas missions pre-date California missions by 90 years. They are privately owned by the Catholic Diocese and are actively supported by their local parishes. Ysleta Mission is the “oldest continuously active parish in the State of Texas.” Completed in 1691, the Socorro Mission was built by Piro Indians after the Pueblo Revolt and is the second oldest mission in Texas. The exterior design represents a thunderbird while the interior is in the shape of a cross. Named after the Catholic patron saint of the military, in 1789 the Spanish Crown established the San Elceario presidio (fort). As part of the military post, the San Elizario Chapel was built in a traditional Spanish Mission style.
the pueblos they’d left behind and dedicating the church to the Franciscan patron Saint Anthony. By 1751, King Charles V of Spain deeded land to the Tigua for their service, and in time other mission churches were built as the community grew. Today these houses of worship, Mission Socorro and Presidio Chapel of San Elizario, form the Mission Trail along El Camino Real, the King’s Highway. Ysleta del Sur came under Texas rule in 1848. The new State of Texas, ignoring the earlier Spanish land grant, gave public land to settlers to develop the expanding city of El Paso, which in turn seized the land given to the Tigua. “The white men were taking our lands,” says Johnny Hisa, former Tigua governor and tribal elder, “and there was nothing we could do about it.” The Tigua lost almost all of their holdings, and only the land around the Ysleta Mission (about 66 acres) remained in the hands of the impoverished Tigua. Fast forward to the mid 1960s, when an El Paso businessman, Tom Diamond, who sympathized over the Tigua people’s destitute living conditions, sought support from the Texas legislature. The Tigua became a protected tribe in Texas in 1967, and 20 years later received federal recognition. The Ysleta del Sur Pueblo today is a federally recognized Native American tribe in the United States (one of only three in Texas) and a sovereign nation with more than 4,000 citizens. The Tigua manage various business and cultural enterprises and are trying to regain their lands little by little. “When something comes up for sale, we try to buy it,” says Rene Lopez, traditional captain of the tribe. Although the tribe still has a long way to go in that process, leadership works unremittingly to protect and preserve their indigenous tradition. Despite adversity, the Ysleta Mission has been rebuilt and operates as one of the longest continually occupied religious buildings in the United States. Built over 300 years ago, the mission has undergone many changes, including damage from fire and flood. In 1891, modernizing Jesuits renamed the church for Our Lady of Mount Carmel and removed the traditional statue of St. Anthony from the altar to a lesser site. By the 2000s, deterioration of the church building had become severe enough to prompt tribal leaders to seek grants for restoration.The
project started in 2016 and took 11 months. With loving attention to detail and tradition, workers reused the worn original wood floors by flipping them over, handcrafted new woodwork, repainted the murals and — most important to the Tiguan people — returned St. Anthony to his place of honor on the altar. “The mission was built for St. Anthony, the original patron saint of Isleta Pueblo,” Hisa says. “That’s the first thing I told people; I’m going to put Saint Anthony back where he belongs — on the altar.” Saint Anthony currently resides behind the altar, with Our Lady of Mount Carmel in
the right transept, while a new statue, St. Kateri Tekakwitha Lily of the Mohawks, graces the left side. The Tigua still respect their ancestors’ religious beliefs and observe traditional holidays at the mission with singing, dancing, drumming and chanting led by the chief (cacique) and the war chief. The Christmas season provides prime opportunities for visitors to witness the melding of cultural traditions at Ysleta del Sur Puelo. And the mission church stands, grandly, to welcome worshippers for centuries to come.
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TRAIL DRIVE UNIVERSITY OF THE INCARNATE WORD: Graduating class, 1922
Abilene Christian University 1600 Campus Court Abilene, TX 79601 (325) 674-2000 acu.edu
Austin College
900 N. Grand Ave. Sherman, TX 75090 (903) 813-2000 austincollege.edu
Hardin-Simmons University
HIGHER ED: Aerial shot of McMurry University with Radford Auditorium in the forefront. Maedgen Administration Building is to the left, and Martin Residence Hall is on the right.
2200 Hickory St. Abilene, TX 79601 (325) 670-1000 hsutx.edu
McMurry University
Across Texas, faith-based colleges and universities have played a central role in higher education
B
by
RICK STRYKER
BEGINNING IN THE 1840s, the proliferation of faith-based colleges and universities in Texas — and the seemingly random decisions to locate them in communities across the state — was actually part of a national trend. These institutions provided a cultural cachet desired by communities as part of their strategy for growth. According to a recent essay by David Labaree in Aeon, there were distinct advantages to this strategy: the willingness of various denominations to undertake the development of a school of higher learning might attract other followers of that faith to
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the community; the clergymen upon whom the success of these schools rested “were reasonably well educated and were willing to work cheap”; and the “church just might be induced to contribute a little money from time to time to support” the school. A close examination of each school uncovers stories of struggle, determination and survival. It’s also evident that the humble early history of the schools didn’t necessarily predict the eventual success and gravitas of the surviving 21st-century college or university. A visit to any one of these thriving, picturesque and historic communities should
Southwestern University 1001 E. University Ave. Georgetown TX 78626 (512) 863-6511 southwestern.edu
University of the Incarnate Word 4301 Broadway St. San Antonio TX 78209 (210) 829-6001 uiw.edu
•
SHERMAN
•
ABILENE
• GEORGETOWN •
SAN ANTONIO
MCMURRY UNIVERSITYl UIW OFFICE OF COMMUNICATION S AND MARKETING
Acts of Faith
1400 Sayles Blvd. Abilene, TX 79697 (325) 793-3800 mcm.edu
Fulfilling its goals, Southwestern University became a central player in Methodist higher education. No visit to the beautiful and historic town of Georgetown is complete without a tour of the Southwestern University campus, one of its crowning assets. It’s become the source of a highly prized liberal arts education.
BUILDING UP: Austin College’s Sherman Hall (labeled) is now on the outskirts of what has become a 100-acre campus, full of a mix of traditional and modern structures.
SOUTHWESTERN UNIVERSITY: Cullen Administrative Building, early 1900s.
gifts. The school opened its doors in 1873 as Texas University, a name that changed when the Texas Legislature officially chartered Southwestern University. Under its new name, the university was recognized as the successor to four predecessors: Rutersville College, Wesleyan College, McKenzie College and Soule University.
Austin College – Sherman Rev. Daniel Baker first came to Texas in 1840 to take on the challenge of serving a rather raw frontier with his Presbyterian message. Along with a number of other Presbyterian clerics, the Brazos Presbytery was formed. To establish a Texas Presbyterian college, they were drawn to Huntsville by the local citizenry. Chartered in 1849, Austin College was born. Like every business and institution in Texas, the Civil War was a major disruption. After years of struggle and facing failure, the good people of Sherman opened the financial door to success, which was accepted in 1876. Interestingly, the old Austin College school building is now part of Sam Houston State University in Huntsville. The story of
FROM TOP: COURTESY AUSTIN COLLEGE; SOUTHEWESTERN UNIVERSITY, SPECIAL COLLECTIONS
include stopping by the “local” college that’s proven its worth by contributing to the growth and prosperity of that community.
Southwestern University – Georgetown The story of Rutersville College, located in Rutersville just northeast of La Grange, is an interesting illustration that success as initially conceptualized wasn’t assured. Briefly, Rutersville College was the dream of Martin Ruter, a Methodist missionary. In 1839 the first Texas conference of the Methodist Church named Chauncey Richardson the first president of Rutersville College. Unfortunately, the institution’s life was a short-lived struggle that ended in 1856. But that isn’t the end of the winding story. In 1871 the Joint Education Convention, comprised of five Methodist conferences in Texas, formed the Texas University Company and sought a promising site for a new Methodist university. The City of Georgetown made the winning offer, which included a newly constructed school facility along with additional property and WIN T E R 2 0 1 8 /’1 9
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Austin College and the City of Sherman is a Texas success story. Austin College is among the most respected liberal arts colleges across Texas and beyond. A walk around the beautiful campus in Sherman provides a close look at one of the community’s most inspiring sites.
University of the Incarnate Word San Antonio Given the long history of the Catholic Church in Texas through the Spanish and later Mexican periods, it isn’t surprising that Catholic institutions of higher education
are well established and highly respected. The University of the Incarnate Word was founded in San Antonio by the Sisters of Charity of the Incarnate Word in 1881 as a Catholic college for women. The Sisters are widely noted for the success of their mission to establish schools, orphanages and hospitals to serve disparate populations. The beautiful campus sits in an idyllic setting adjacent to Brackenridge Park on the San Antonio River. HIGHER EDUCATION IN ABILENE
In the 19th century, proximity to the
railroad spurred the location and spawned growth of a number of Texas communities. Abilene deserves special recognition for its successful efforts to incorporate and nurture faith-based higher education institutions as a strategy to bring growth, prosperity and credibility to their nascent community from its earliest stages. In 1891, within 10 years of Abilene’s establishment, the Baptist Church founded the first higher education institution with what would become Hardin-Simmons University. In 1906 the Christian Church initiated an effort that would result in Abilene Christian University, and in 1923 the Methodist Church founded McMurry University. These successful faith-based institutions remain a signature component of the Abilene community.
Hardin-Simmons University In 1891 the Sweetwater Baptist Association established Abilene Baptist College. It was nurtured in its early years first by James B. Simmons and later by John G. Hardin, resulting in the name change to HardinSimmons University. Since 1940 the university has been under the control of the Baptist General Convention of Texas. From its beginnings as an academy, it grew to become a respected institution.
Abilene Christian University A. B. Barrett founded Childers Classical Institute in 1906. From its founding, those serving on the board of trustees have been members of the Church of Christ, and most of the students have come from the Christian Church. In 1920 the Institue was officially named Abilene Christian College, which was changed to Abilene Christian University in 1976.
McMurry University
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In 1923 the Northwest Conference of the Methodist Church founded McMurry University, named after Bishop William Fletcher McMurry. Its founder, James Winfred Hunt, a Methodist minister and former president of Stamford College, was unwilling to relinquish his dream of a West Texas Methodist College after Stamford College closed. As enticement, the citizens of Abilene offered money, land, free water and streetcar connections to the new school. AU THENTIC TEX AS
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LIFE EATS & DRINKS
Local Loyalty – with an Epic Name
A combination bookstore, coffeehouse, and brewhouse serves as a central meeting place for Sweetwater residents
wonder about the company’s name, printed over the picture of a dog outside the historic building located on the square in downtown Sweetwater. Just step inside, and you’ll know all you need to know. Everything
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LORETTA FULTON
about Argos Brewhouse & Bookseller screams “chic,” “cool,” “wow.” From the restored original floors, ceiling and stone walls to the granite bar top fabricated from a former Nolan County Courthouse … to the footrest that runs the length of the bar to the
custom-made tables that were crafted from cedar floors in an old house — all of it says a lot of planning, care and imagination went into this place. The restored building, which was built in 1902 as a Singer Sewing Machine facility and has housed various busi-
Argos Brewhouse & Bookseller 209 Oak St. Sweetwater, TX 79556 (325) 933-4272
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nesses since, opened in 2017 as the brainchild of Jared Houze, vicar of St. Stephen’s Episcopal Church, and local attorneys Rod Wetsel and Jeff Allen, whose offices are upstairs. Argos is an outreach of St. Stephen’s, although the church
Tue.–Thur. 7:30–10:30 am; 4–7 pm Fri. 7:30–10:30 am; 4–10 pm Sat. 4–10 pm (or later for events)
VISIT SWEETWATER sweetwatertexas.org
• SWEETWATER
FORTS TRAIL REGION
JARED HOUZE
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THERE’S NO NEED TO
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OPEN BOOK: Argos aims to be a casual hangout for all of Sweetwater’s residents, even offering children’s activites on some days.
doesn’t benefit from it financially, Houze says. Once a month, the church hosts a Story Time Hour at Argos for families in the community. A spiritual formation class sponsored by St. Stephen’s occasionally meets at Argos, too. Houze, Wetsel and Allen had the idea of a traditional public house in mind when they designed Argos. On any given day, you might find children listening to a story or adults enjoying a Texas craft beer or glass of wine and pastries while reading a new book purchased at Argos, or special events with food trucks and live music by regional artists. “This is a new innovation in Sweetwater,” Wetsel says. “I don’t think we’ve had a bookstore here in half a century.” But you don’t need a reason to stop by Argos. Just go in and prepare to be amazed. The stone walls are decorated with old photos of downtown Sweetwater, along with an assortment of photographs and paintings created by local and regional artists. Oh, about that name. “We pulled it from The Odyssey,” co-owner Allen says. “It’s the name of Ulysses’ dog in the book, who’s a symbol of loyalty, sitting and waiting for Ulysses all those years to come back. That’s what we want to be for this community — to be there for it and be loyal to it.”
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EATS & DRINKS
Barbecue – Holy-Smoked
At Church BBQ in Huntsville, the head pastor of the local Baptist church serves as manager
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RYAN GRIFFITH
the counter, jumping up whenever a new customer enters. Edison runs a tight ship, barking out barbecue orders and ensuring that they’re delivered quickly. It’s hardly surprising to find out he spent seven years as a correctional officer at the city’s massive prison before he felt the call of ecclesiastical life. It’s difficult to pin down exactly when the Church BBQ opened to
the public — there are conflicting accounts — but there’s no question it had been operating for at least a decade when Edison took over as New Zion’s pastor. There’s also no question about who started it: Annie Mae Ward’s picture hangs on a rafter above the checkout counter, and Edison frequently glances toward it as he recounts the restaurant’s history. It started by chance,
Edison says, when some men in the congregation decided to work on the church building. “They just made an outing of it,” he explains, “and Sister Ward made a makeshift barbecue pit.” Ward placed a refrigerator rack over a foot tub (a miniature metal bathtub designed for washing one’s feet) and began to smoke meat for the men. “She couldn’t prepare her husband’s dinner without
Church BBQ 2601 Montgomery Rd. Huntsville, TX 77340 (936) 294-0084
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Thur.–Sat. 11 am–6 pm
VISIT HUNTSVILLE huntsvilletexas.com
FOREST TRAIL REGION
HUNTSVILLE
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TWO-HUNDRED yards from a busy Huntsville intersection, a small wooden shack stands as an odd companion to the old-world splendor of the New Zion Missionary Baptist Church. It would be easy to miss without its hand-painted sign, which bears the word “Barbeque” in large, faded letters. Inside, New Zion head pastor and Church BBQ manager Clinton Edison reclines in a chair behind
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BBQ PARADISE: Head pastor Clinton Edison dishes out delicious barbecue and Sunday sermons.
MICHAEL HARRISON
people stopping and wanting to know, ‘Are you “there’s several restaurants, and everybody’s got selling barbecue?’” Edison continues. “That was a barbecue. Everybody cooks meat. This restau50 years ago, and it just started from there. The rant is run on its past success, so that’s it. It’s run very next week, they borrowed $50 from the on past success.” church and started this business.” Cynthia Archie is a retired nurse who works Once Ward passed away, the business was at the restaurant because she thought it would run by two members of the congregation, Sister be a good excuse to get out of the house and Archie and Deacon Archie. “After Sister Archie be active. She’s related to the late May Archie by unexpectedly passed away,” Edison adds, “every marriage, and she has a different opinion on the day I’d come over here and my phone would just reason behind Church BBQ’s popularity: “Good be inundated with ‘When are you opening the holy-smoked barbecue.” She laughs. “That’s the barbecue? When are you opening the barbename of it. Everything is done from scratch.” cue?’” No one volunteered to take over the busiRyan Griffith, an avid student of history, is a senior public relations major at Baylor. ness, and eventually Edison yielded to barbecue devotees’ constant requests and re-opened it himself, careRIGHTEOUS PATH: The commute ful not to deviate even the from church (at right) to lunch (left) is a short one for those slightest bit from the recipes attending New Zion Missionary that made Church BBQ so Baptist Church. popular. “We do everything in here exactly the way Sister Ward did it, even the tea,” he says. “You have to come to Church BBQ to get this tea, this old church recipe that Sister Ward came up with.” Edison attributes the restaurant’s following to word of mouth. “Nowadays,” he says,
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EATS & DRINKS
FROM SCRATCH: Susie Hitchcock-Hall, the owner of Suisie’s South Forty (left), makes her candy by hand and even designs all her own boxes. But the business may be best known for creating the world’s largest piece of toffee (below), granting Suisie’s a place in the Guinness Book of World Records.
Candy with a Kicker
Susie’s South Forty in Midland serves up sweet confections — and holds the record for the world’s largest piece of toffee by
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401 South Marienfeld St. Midland, TX 79701 (432) 570-4040 (800) 221-4442
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best candy in West Texas, try Susie’s South Forty Confections in Midland. Susie Hitchcock-Hall is an icon in the candymaking business with a number of awards and honors. She started teaching social dance through the YMCA in the mid’70s. She taught mostly country western and line dancing. She always wore her favorite bright-red
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cowboy boots. Then, in 1991, her love of cooking led her to develop candy recipes and open Susie’s South Forty Confections. Texas Pecan Toffee was her first concoction, followed by chewy Kickers Praline. “I design all of my own boxes,” HitchcockHall says, “and the shape and color of the Kickers box is a nod to those red boots I love so much.”
Hitchcock-Hall uses only quality chocolate that she orders from Belgium. Susie’s South Forty Confections is located in downtown Midland. The factory was relocated to downtown in 2014 when the lease on her factory was canceled because the owner needed the building for an oil trucking company. Hitchcock-Hall wasn’t unnerved, however, because she understands
the importance of the oil business in Midland. When you walk into her factory and retail store, the first thing you see is the windmill that once sat on top of her old factory. It’s a grand sight that demonstrates her Texas roots. The factory is on the other side of the windmill, and you can watch as the candy-makers mix and make all the delicious sweets. You can even
2101 W. Wadley St., Suite 1 Plaza Oaks/Corner of Wadley and Garfield Midland, TX 79705 (432) 687-4040
HOURS
Mon.–Fri. 10 am–6 pm Sat. 10 am–6 pm
VISIT MIDLAND visitmidland.com
• MIDLAND
PECOS TRAIL REGION
SUSIE’S SOUTH FORTY/FACEBOOK; KRIS J. MURANTE
Mon.–Fri. 9 am–6 pm Sat. 10 am–5:30 pm
IF YOU’RE looking for the
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Susie’s South Forty Confections
taste samples in the store. Hitchcock-Hall has two retail locations that contain all things Texas. She has 21 different candies and a variety of other sweets. Need a Texas souvenir? Hitchcock-Hall has it. She carries all kinds of Texas-logoed items and cookbooks with Texas recipes. Do you like toffee? Hitchcock-Hall is in the Guinness Book of World Records for the largest piece of toffee. The record was set on Sept. 17, 2002. The giant piece of pecan toffee was made in the shape of Texas and contained a total of 7,056,000 calories. At its widest point the toffee measured 10.5 feet wide, 8.5 feet long, and 2 feet deep. The ingredients included 1,040 pounds of butter, 851 pounds of sugar, 690 pounds of pecan pieces, 200 pounds of chocolate, 30 pounds of salt, two pounds of lecithin, 60 pounds of powdered sugar and 88 gallons of water, which evaporated during the cooking of the toffee. The piece weighed 2,940 pounds. Hitchcock-Hall makes all of her candy from scratch. She provided candy for President George W. Bush’s inaugural ball — both George and Laura Bush are big fans — and her candy is a favorite gift of many corporations. The company ships to all 50 states and 35 countries.
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DEEP IN THE ART
KEYS TO SUCCESS: (from top) Wealth created by the East Texas oil boom in the early twentieth century meant churches could now afford elaborate pipe organs; Roy Perry, to whom the East Texas Pipe Organ Festival in Kilgore is dedicated.
Pipes of Plenty
The oil boom brought impressive wealth — and equally impressive pipe organs — to Texas CASSANDRA LANCE-MARTINEZ
HURCHES BIG AND SMALL fill up across the state each Sunday with devout worshipers. Sunday service has been the backbone of many Texas homes for generations, and, if you’re extra lucky, the church you attend might have the music of a pipe organ billowing through the pews. But that wasn’t always so in Texas. The introduction of the pipe organ to churches in the state didn’t come about until after the oil boom at the turn of the twentieth century, which brought masses of wealth and people to the Lone Star State. In 1894, oil was found in Corsicana by a drilling contractor hired initially by the city to find water. The oil well produced fewer than three barrels of oil a day, but the discovery transformed the slow-paced agricultural town into a petroleum and industrial center. Following the discovery of “black gold” in
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Corsicana, East Texas was transformed into the oil capital of the world — especially for one town in particular, which sparked the oil madness that put Texas on the industry’s global map. During the early 1900s, a large petroleum reserve was discovered near the southeastern town of Beaumont, roughly an hour and a half east of Houston, that was unprecedented in its size worldwide. Also known as the “Gusher Age,” the oil boom brought workers and investors from around the country, settling their families in Beaumont and other east Texas towns such as Kilgore and Palestine with the hopes of establishing wealth by way of oil. An influx of people and money meant contributions to spruce up local churches, suiting the expectations of the newly wealthy. The opulence and grandeur of the pipe organ was integrated into East Texas Sunday services in these oncesleepy passersby towns; even the First Presbyterian
East Texas Pipe Organ Festival Kilgore, TX 75663 easttexaspipeorganfestival.com
VISIT BEAUMONT beaumontcvb.com
VISIT CORSICANA visitcorsicana.com
VISIT KILGORE visitkilgore.com
VISIT PALESTINE visitpalestine.com
FROM LEFT: COURTESY EAST TEXAS MATTERS; COURTESY MICHAEL JOHNSTON
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FROM LEFT: COURTESY FIRST PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH, KILGORE; O. RUFUS LOVETT
Church of Austin, for its 50th anniversary in 1900, recruited famed organist Clarence Eddy from Chicago to perform the inaugural concert on its new instrument. The origin of the pipe organ can be traced back to the third century BC, when the instrument was first conceptualized and constructed by a Greek engineer named Ctesibuis working in Alexandria, modern-day Egypt. These instruments can be found throughout the ancient world in Greek and Hebrew cultures of the Eastern Mediterranean and were reintroduced to Western Europe after the fall of the Roman Empire in the eighth century AD. Churches in Texas, however, didn’t hear the powerful sound of the pipe organ for many centuries afterwards. Take Kilgore, for example. The oil boom brought Roy Perry to Kilgore from Louisiana in 1932 at age 26. He was the organist and choirmaster at the First Presbyterian Church of Kilgore, a Gothic-style building perfectly designed to support the acoustics of a choir and organ. His successful career led him to an eventual relationship designing and tonally finishing pipe organs for Aeolian-Skinner, a renowned Boston company known for its impressive pipe organs. Today, the five-day East Texas Pipe Organ Festival in Kilgore preserves the legacy of Perry and his contributions to the pipe organ industry. The festival is a mixture of concerts, special guests, presentations and exhibits. His five Aeolian-Skinner pipe organs can be experienced and enjoyed at First Presbyterian Church of Kilgore; St. Luke’s United Methodist Church in Kilgore; First Baptist Church of Longview; First Baptist Church of Nacogdoches; and St. Mark’s Episcopal Cathedral in Shreveport, La. WIN T E R 2 0 1 8 /’1 9
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DEEP IN THE ART
Windows on the World At the Cavallini Company in San Antonio, tradition and technology merge to produce stunning stained glass art
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KIRSTIN CUTTS
HE STRETCH of Blanco Road in San Antonio that hosts the Cavallini Company Stained Glass Studio is a pretty standard urban landscape, with convenience stores, auto shops and fast food restaurants dotting the streets. The broad, low-slung Cavallini warehouse blends right in — until, that is, you walk through the front door of the company’s retail store and see the small stained glass window hangings inside. It’s a drizzly day, without much
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distinction between the grey asphalt and overcast sky, so the little chunks of color seem especially bright. Adrian Cavallini greets me and promptly invites me back to a studio filled with tables covered in meticulously drawn plans and, of course, windows in varying stages of assembly. Many are destined for private homes in San Antonio and elsewhere in the Hill Country. “Commissions make up about 35 to 40 percent of our business,” Cavallini estimates.
Cavallini Co., Inc. Stained Glass Studio & Supply Center 4719 Blanco Rd. San Antonio, TX 78212 (210) 733-8161 cavallinistudios.com
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Mon.–Fri. 9 am–5 pm Sat. 10 am–5 pm
FROM LEFT: COURTESY CAVALLINI CO., INC.; COURTESY SAN ANTONIO BUSINESS JOURNAL
BRINGING TO LIGHT: (from left) “Risen Christ” at St. Jerome’s Catholic Church in San Antonio; owner Adrian Cavallini in 2003. His father, Manlio, founded the business in 1953.
PHOTOS COURTESY CAVALLINI CO., INC.
In addition to its PIECE-WORK: (from top) Stained-glass panel depicting work for individual the “Baptism of Christ” at homeowners, the the First Baptist Church in Texas; a view of company designs Pasadena, the church’s stained-glass and installs mosa- panels from floor level. ics and stained glass windows in churches and private chapels across Texas and the Southwest. The art glass market is small but complex, and the Cavallini Company has developed a solid and respected presence during its several decades of operation. Adrian’s father, Manlio Cavallini, founded the business in 1953 after emigrating from Italy. At first, the company focused on art glass mosaics, adorning spaces from swimming pools to San Antonio’s Tower of the Americas. Adrian has worked with his father since high school, eventually joining the company full time and now serving as its president. “My dad’s specialty was mosaics,” he notes, “but he gave me the freedom to figure out what to do with stained glass.” The Cavallinis broadened their scope to include stained, faceted and etched glass work, with restoration services picking up in the early 1980s. Adrian’s wife, Debbie, and their three sons all work for the company, along with a team of designers and fabricators. The Cavallinis have worked on original windows and restoration projects in churches and chapels from El Paso to Beaumont, even stretching into New Mexico, Oklahoma, Arkansas and Louisiana. The process of creating a stained glass window, whether for a private home or a large church, requires careful planning, extensive communication and the skills of a dedicated and experienced team. Stained glass as a craft has been practiced for hundreds of years, and the massive windows in the cathedrals of Chartres, in France, or Augsburg, in Germany, are still as dazzling against the stone as they were in the thirteenth century. Obviously, the technology has changed throughout the generations, but the fundamentals of design and construction remain the same. When a client approaches the Cavallinis with a project, the practical details are established first: dimensions, structural materials and the like. Then the conversation can move to questions of design, imagery, color — all elements necessary to “create the mood” the client desires. Many large, illustrative church windows, both in the Cavallini Company’s repertoire and elsewhere, are made with leaded glass. When glass is treated with lead oxide,
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it becomes both brighter Select List of Cavallini and more receptive to Projects in Texas colored stains. The leaded glass windows in the St. Jerome’s Catholic Church San Antonio Cavallini portfolio show scenes of remarkable St. Dominic’s Catholic Church detail and depth, from San Antonio depictions of the Seven Sacraments to portraits First Baptist Church Pasadena of saints and other holy figures. These features of San Antonio Zoo a leaded glass window are hand-painted before St. Thomas Aquinas Church being fired in a kiln at El Paso 1100 degrees Fahrenheit University of the Incarnate to fuse the paint to the Word glass. San Antonio The electric kiln seems like a significant Huguley Hospital Fort Worth modern perk to the creative process. When I St. Monica Catholic Church mention this to Cavallini, Dallas he agrees. “The tools and the technology have Mt. Olive Lutheran Church Houston improved,” he says. “We use metal alloys with St. Andrew the Apostle more antimony to build Church windows that are more Lufkin structurally sound, and we
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plot layouts on the computer.” He’s quick to emphasize, however, that for his company the computer is just that: a tool. “We still do the design by hand,” he explains, “and that’s what we’ve been doing all along. I think the end product is better.” Roch Babin agrees. He’s worked as a designer with the Cavallini Company for 36 years. He pulls out some designs he’s currently refining for a church in Beaumont, hand-drawn with colored pencils. Pencils are better for mosaic designs, he explains; he uses watercolors for stained glass. After viewing the numerous books on cathedral glass, rose windows and iconography in his studio, I wonder if there’s any tension between incorporating images that belong to such an established and
recognizable artistic tradition and creating original works in the twenty-first century. “Well, I call myself a designer,” Roch says. “I’ll do my research and draw from that stimulus, but it’s an architectural art form.” Touring the studio, with its concrete floors and wood cabinets containing tools and raw glass sheets, is visual evidence that art is as much about the gritty detail as it is about creative genius. A lot of planning, teamwork and physical labor is required to achieve the “splashing of purple and miracles,” as French writer Paul Claudel once rhapsodized. Cavallini has modified the old carpentry adage of “measure twice, cut once,” doubling the first figure. After over half a century in business, you have to figure he knows what he’s talking about. When Cavallini walks me back to the parking lot, he points out a mosaic on the front of the building. Panels of a swirling, abstract design in reds, greens and blues decorate several feet along the wall. Adrian’s father, Manlio, now 89, designed and installed that mosaic last year. It’s an encouraging testament to the continuation of an ancient craft, coexisting with contemporary technology and still holding the power to evoke contemplation and awe.
Happenings W I N T E R 20 1 8
DO-NOT-MISS STUFF TO DO AROUND TEXAS
BRAZOS TRAIL
FOREST TRAIL
FORTS TRAIL
HILL COUNTRY INDEPENDENCE TRAIL TRAIL
LAKES TRAIL
MOUNTAIN TRAIL
PECOS TRAIL
Christmas at the Mansion MIDLAND
PLAINS TRAIL REGION
Nov. 28–Dec. 29 Museum of the Southwest (432) 683-2882 museumsw.org
LAKES TRAIL REGION FORTS TRAIL REGION MOUNTAIN TRAIL REGION
PECOS TRAIL REGION
BRAZOS TRAIL REGION
HILL COUNTRY TRAIL REGION
FOREST TRAIL REGION
INDEPENDENCE TRAIL REGION
TROPICAL TRAIL REGION
December
Bring the entire family to enjoy all the Museum has to offer during the holidays. Listen to local musicians perform, participate in holidaythemed crafts, visit Santa and see the entire campus decorated for the holidays.
Concho Christmas Celebration Tour of Lights
PLAINS TRAIL
TROPICAL TRAIL
of Christmas, a toy factory, a gingerbread house, an elaborate nativity scene, Santa Claus and more.
SAN ANGELO
Nov. 30–Dec 31 Downtown San Angelo (325) 944-4444 conchochristmascelebration. com Pack everyone in the car, tune the radio to KCSA 97.1 FM, and drive the 2.5 miles along the banks of the Concho River through the Tour of Lights. Enjoy the beauty of more than 3 million lights and animated scenes depicting the 12 Days
Prairie Lights GRAND PRAIRIE
Dec. 1–31 Lynn Creek Park prairielights.org Enjoy 4 million lights set along two miles of path. Hundreds of all-new displays line and arch over the roads. Halfway through the drive, visitors can exit their cars
Wonderland of Lights Marshall
Wonderland of Lights MARSHALL
GREATER MARSHALL CHAMBER OF COMMERCE
Nov. 21–Dec. 30 Downtown Marshall (903) 702-7777 marshalltexas.net Conceived in 1987, Wonderland of Lights rivals the best Christmas lighting events in the country. Millions of white lights illuminate the historic Harrison County Courthouse as downtown Marshall is transformed into a winter wonderland. Visitors can enjoy the outdoor ice skating rink, or catch a ride on the Holly Trolley, Wonderland Express or the beautifully restored vintage 1948 Herschel carousel.
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and stop at Holiday Village, with food, gifts, Santa, a brand-new indoor Holiday Show and the Holiday Magic Lighted Walk-Through Forest. The second half of the drive ends with the dazzling animated light tunnel.
Comanche Trail Festival of Lights BIG SPRING
Dec. 3–25 Comanche Trail Park (432) 263-4607 visitbigspring.com Bring the family to enjoy a leisurely drive through the historic park, illuminated with more than 1 million lights and sculptures. Visit the restored Comanche Springs, and stop in for refreshments and gift shopping at the end of the Trail.
Christmas Cellar Tour BRYAN
Dec. 15, 22, 23 Messina Hof Winery and Resort (979) 778-9463 messinahof.com
Bird Johnson. Enjoy carolers, a live nativity, Santa Claus, refreshments and, of course, the spectacular tree lighting. Then revisit the past at the Sauer-Beckmann Living History Farm.
New Year’s Eve Ball in Luckenbach LUCKENBACH
Dec. 31 (830) 997-3224 luckenbachtexas.com Ring in the New Year with a champagne toast in Luckenbach’s famous dance hall.
January [All Trails] First Day Hike January 1, 2019 tpwd.texas.gov Your New Year’s resolution to get outside and enjoy nature will get a great start on a First
Day Hike at a State Park!
The Hidden Dallas Tour DALLAS
Jan. 19 Cost Plus World Market (972) 814-5997 dallasbychocolate.com Discover Dallas’ secret places with whimsical sculptures, waterfalls and beautiful homes. Reservations required.
Sandhills Stock Show and Rodeo, Odessa
Sandhills Stock Show and Rodeo ODESSA
Jan. 2–12 Ector County Coliseum (432) 366-3951 sandhillsssr.com The Sandhills Rodeo includes all of the Professional Rodeo Cowboys Association (PRCA) events: bareback riding, steer wrestling, team roping, saddle-bronc riding, tie-down roping, bull riding, barrel racing and steer roping.
Martin Luther King March and Festival AUSTIN
Jan. 19 Huston-Tillotson University mlkcelebration.com Be part of the march from the MLK statue at the University of Texas to the Historic Huston-Tillotson campus to celebrate the legacy of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.
24th Annual Eagle Fest EMORY
Jan. 19 Rains Elementary Schoo (817) 473-2465 emorytx.com In the “Eagle Capital of Texas,” take bus and barge tours to area lakes to see bald eagles in their natural habitat. The festival includes bird and
LBJ Tree Lighting Stonewall
Sip a glass of warm mulled wine as you stroll around the estate and hear the history of the winery, including traditions of Christmas from Italy and Germany, the wineries’ two family origins. Then, finish off the tour with a luscious Papa Paulo Port Chocolate Truffle.
49th Annual LBJ Tree Lighting Dec. 16 Lyndon B. Johnson State Park & Historic Site (830) 644-2252 tpwd.texas.gov/state-parks/ lyndon-b-johnson Come and take part in this special tradition started 49 years ago by President Lyndon Johnson and Lady
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STONEWALL
across the world, featuring rough stock events such as bull riding, saddle bronc riding and bareback riding, plus timed events like team roping, tie-down roping, steer wrestling and women’s barrel racing. The Stock Show provides an opportunity for youth across the state to participate in one of Texas’ largest livestock shows. Additionally, this annual event includes a carnival, exhibit hall and Kids’ Korral.
Eagle Fest in Emory
San Antonio Stock Show & Rodeo SAN ANTONIO
Feb. 7–24 AT&T Center (210) 225-5851 sarodeo.com Established in 1949, the San Antonio Stock Show & Rodeo has grown to be one of the largest and most prestigious events in the city.
Wine Swirl 2019 NACAGDOCHES
Feb. 9 Downtown Nacogdoches (936) 559-2573 visitnacogdoches.org/wineswirl This ticketed wine and foodpairing event showcases Texas wineries and local and regional food trucks along the historic brick streets of Nacogdoches.
The Day the Music Died LUBBOCK
Feb. 3 Buddy Holly Center (806) 775-3560 buddyhollycenter.org animal exhibits and programs, live entertainment and music, as well as educational speakers.
ment, seed, chemicals and ag-related services and technologies. Admission is free.
Feb. 3 marks the anniversary of the tragic plane crash that
Oysterfest
Winter Outdoor Wildlife Expo South Padre Island
FULTON
Feb. 7–Mar. 10 Fulton Navigation Park (361) 463-9955 fultonoysterfest.org
Winter Outdoor Wildlife Expo SOUTH PADRE ISLAND
Jan. 22–26 South Padre Island (956) 761-6801 spibirding.com
COURTESY EAGLEFEST; COURTESY WOWS
This five-day event features the unique resources of South Padre Island with a different focus for each day. Learn about the special environment, the Laguna Madre, the Gulf and fishing, the plants, butterflies and birds. Special raptor programs by Jonathan Woods. Friday focuses on family-friendly activities.
49th Annual Mid-Tex Farm, Ranch & Garden Show
The 41st annual Fulton Oysterfest is a salute to the tasty bivalve found in the local waters. It’s a family-friendly event with carnival rides, games, food, an oyster eating contest, live music and vendor booths. Scurry County Museum Chocolate Fest SNYDER
February San Angelo Stock Show & Rodeo
WACO
SAN ANGELO
Jan. 31 Extraco Event Center (254) 757-5600 wacochamber.com
Feb. 1–17 Foster Communications Coliseum (325) 653-7785 sanangelorodeo.com
Visitors have the opportunity to view top exhibits of the newest farm and ranch equip-
The sanctioned rodeo is open to cowboys and cowgirls
claimed the lives of Buddy Holly, Ritchie Valens, J.P. Richardson (The Big Bopper) and pilot Roger Peterson. This date has affectionately been given the name “The Day the Music Died” by the Buddy Holly Center, after a lyric in the Don McLean song “American Pie.” Patrons are invited to the Center to celebrate the life and legacy of Buddy Holly.
Feb. 9 Manhattan Coffee House (325) 573-3558 snyderchamber.org/chocolate-fest Chocolate Fest features artists, live music, a silent auction and pairings and tastings of chocolate and wine. The event benefits the Scurry County Museum.
21st Annual Stars of Texas Juried Art Exhibit BROWNWOOD
Feb. 10–23 Depot Civic and Cultural Center (325) 647-4002 starsoftexasjuriedartexhibit. com This juried art exhibit (judged this year by Fort Worth artist Pat Gabriel) will include original 3D and 2D artworks from most disciplines, including painting, photography, digital/computer-generated art, sculpture, drawing and printmaking. On weekdays, three artists will explain and demonstrate their art. The event culminates with presentation of awards and prizes.
Annual Small Works Invitational DUMAS
Feb. 10–Mar. 12 The Art Center (806) 935-5312 www.dumasmuseumandartcenter.org This annual event showcases artists of all mediums working in small format — each piece must be smaller than 8”x10”.
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Sherwood Forest Faire in McDade
Art Trail in the Village
musical heritage and entertainment.
LUBBOCK
Feb. 3–19 thevillageshoppingcenter. com
It’s Never Just a Horse FORT WORTH
Partnering with area schools, this shopping center showcases student artwork from area schools. Art Trail in the Village promotes confidence, creativity, dedication, patience and school spirit with those students participating.
GALVESTON
Feb. 22–Mar. 5 Galveston (888) 425-4753 mardigrasgalveston.com Enjoy the 108th annual Mardi Gras Galveston with elaborate parades, headliner performers, family events, feasting and other festivities that come with hosting Mardi Gras — island style.
Charro Days Fiesta BROWNSVILLE
Feb. 23–Mar. 10 Various locations (956) 542-4245 charrodaysfiesta.com Born to lift community spirits toward the close of the Great Depression in the late 1930s, Charro Days Fiesta celebrates its 82nd anniversary in 2019 with the same dedication to bi-national friendship and respect for traditions that first captivated Brownsville long ago. Enjoy festivals, parades, dances and the Charro Days Carnival.
Houston Livestock Show and Rodeo HOUSTON
Feb. 25–Mar. 17 NRG Park (832) 667-1000 rodeohouston.com
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The Houston Livestock Show and Rodeo is the world’s largest rodeo.
Entertainment includes magic shows, puppet shows, storytelling and combat tournaments.
March
Sherwood Forest Faire MCDADE
Weekends in March and April (512) 222-6680 sherwoodforestfaire.com The forest is filled with family entertainment. You can shop for treasures and hear the sounds of bagpipes.
The Georgetown Swirl GEORGETOWN Mar. 2 Georgetown Square (512) 930-2027 swirl.georgetown.org Get your friends together for this event that includes tastings from Texas wineries as well as food from restaurants located inside the downtown
retailer stops.
Borderfest HIDALGO Mar. 2–3 State Farm Arena (956) 843-6688 hidalgoborderfest.com In its 42nd year, South Texas’ largest music, culture and heritage festival is a multi-day extravaganza that pays homage to a different country each year. In 2019, celebrate Spain and its unique cuisine, language, arts and crafts,
Rio Grande Valley Livestock Show and Rodeo MERCEDES
Mar. 7–17 Rio Grande Valley Livestock Show Grounds (945) 565-2456 rgvls.com
Borderfest in Hidalgo
COURTESY SHERWOOD FOREST FAIRE; COURTESY BORDERFEST
Mardi Gras Galveston
Mar. 6, 2019–Mar. 6, 2023 National Cowgirl Museum and Hall of Fame (817) 336-4475 cowgirl.net The second floor of the museum will reopen in March with a new exhibit paying homage to the undeniable link among the horse, women and the West. The upper floor will feature islands examining the partnerships of women and horses. From time to time, the gallery lights will dim, and visitors will be surrounded by horses coming from every direction. In addition, the popular interactive bronc ride will continue.
The first incarnation of this annual event was held in 1939 on the grounds of a local livestock sales yard with makeshift pens and lean-to sheds. Over the past 80 years, it has grown to be one of the top 10 shows in the state, featuring live performances, festival foods, parades, horse shows, cooking contests, competitive events, petting zoos and more.
The Best Little Cowboy Gathering in Texas
Nederland Heritage Festival
LA GRANGE
NEDERLAND
Mar. 8–10 Fayett County Fairgrounds (979) 702-0086 bestlittlecowboygathering.org
Mar. 12–17 Nederland Festival Grounds (409) 724-2269 nederlandhf.org
With entertainment on both the Dance Hall Stage and Outside Stage, enjoy a week-
This festival is a homecoming and sixday block party. Every night features a different type of music, from Cajun and R&B to country and rock ’n’ roll. Activities include booths, a crafts market, chili cook off, petting zoo, free entertainment, motorcycle show, carnival and the best food in Southeast Texas (all homemade).
World’s Largest Rattlesnake Roundup SWEETWATER
Mar. 8-10 Nolan County Coliseum (325) 235-5488 rattlesnakeroundup.net Started in 1958, the Roundup is held by the Sweetwater Jaycees. Events include a cookoff, dance, bus tours, guided hunts and carnival, along with a gun, coin and knife show.
end of great music and dancing — day and night — along with BBQ cookers, children’s events, historical events and Texas-sized hospitality.
Nederland Heritage Festival in Nederland
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LEGACY PRESERVATION p. 74 H PERSONALITY p. 76 H ARCHIVE p. 80 H HISTORIES p. 82
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FINE ART: (from left) The church’s stunning interior is believed to have been painted soon after its construction in 1895; the unveiling of the historical marker honoring St. Mary’s.
Sacred
Marking Praha’s “Painted Church” with its extraordinary interior art dates to the nineteenth century by ANDY RHODES
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extraordinary impact. A large crowd cheered as the marker was unveiled and speakers praised the congregation and its significance. “St. Mary’s is a destination for local parishioners and heritage travelers who find comfort in its traditional iconography and welcoming sense of place,”said Bob Brinkman, TCH Marker Program Coordinator, following the ceremony. “One can immediately feel the church’s remarkable history upon entering its massive front doors. St. Mary’s is indeed a Texas treasure.” According to St. Mary’s National Register file, the church’s beautiful interior
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dedi- the rolling prairie of southeastern Texas. St. Mary’s Church of the Assumption cation trumpeted from the front page of the local paper: is also historically significant because of its “The little village of Praha, in rural nineteenth-century Gothic Revival this county, was the scene of style and its distinctive interior painting. the grandest affair in its history yesterday,” Originally established in 1855 by Czech settlers, St. Mary’s was the announced a November first Roman Catholic church 1895 issue of the Weimar The Greater Schulenburg Mercury. “The occasion was between San Antonio and one long to be remembered Chamber of Commerce Houston. (The community 618 N. Main St. by those participating.” of Praha is located near Schulenburg, TX 78956 (866) 504-5294 Flatonia.) Nearly 122 years later, schulenburgchamber.org Since then it’s played an the news was similar. Praha’s St. Mary’s Church of the Painted Churches Tour essential role in the community’s social and cultural Assumption — now revered (979) 743-4514 Mon.–Fri. 9 am–4 pm scene. Every year on Aug. as one of Texas’ iconic Sat. 9 am–3 pm 15, the Prazka Pout (“homePainted Churches — hostcoming”) celebration is ed a dedication event for St. Mary’s Church held on the church’s picturthe unveiling of its Texas 821 FM1295 Flatonia, TX 78941 esque grounds. St. Mary’s is Historical Commission offi(361) 596-4674 reportedly the only Roman cial marker. Scheduled as stmaryspraha.org Catholic church in the counpart of the church’s annual try to host such a custom. picnic, which regularly draws At the marker dedication, officials from thousands of attendees, the marker ceremo- ny provided a fitting reflection of the 1895 the church, community and Texas Historical event celebrating this faithful landmark on Commission gathered to honor St. Mary’s EWS OF THE CHURCH
MIRO DVORSCAK
was painted soon after the building was completed in 1895. It’s rare to find these types of architectural and plant forms depicted with such a skillful use of freehand trompe l’oeil techniques — using realistic imagery to create the optical illusion that the painted objects exist in three dimensions. Of particular visual interest is the painted flora (potentially representing Paradise) in green and blue hues among rose, white and yellow blossoms. The ceiling artist was Gottfried Flurry, a Switzerland native who immigrated to the United States as a 17-year-old in 1881. Flurry painted scenery in New York theaters before
moving to San Antonio in 1891, where he became known as a painter of church murals and frescoes. St. Mary’s is one of the few remaining structures that displays his work. “It’s rather inspiring to think that congregation members have been gazing upon this same sacred artwork for more than a century,” Brinkman observed. “As was reported all those years ago in the local newspaper, ‘The church is a fine structure, built of rock and will last for all time.’”
Andy Rhodes is the managing editor of the THC’s Medallion magazine. He’s written two Texas guidebooks (Moon Texas and Moon Houston & The Texas Gulf Coast) and contributed to The Guardian, American Cowboy and Texas Highways. WIN T E R 2 0 1 8 /’1 9
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EXPERT INSTRUCTION: “I try to show how people lived thousands of years ago,” Campell, a former teacher, says, “and how they wrote history without letters of words.”
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LEGACY TEXAS ORIGINAL
Pictograph EVERY
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STORY Paint Rock is named for the hundreds of images that remain from ancient times
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by MARGARET HOOGSTRA
A DIMINUTIVE LADY with white hair, sparkling eyes and an easy laugh scrapes a reddish-brown rock, mixes the rock shavings with a dab of water, then paints her arm while sharing the story of Paint Rock. “It’s important to have an appreciation for your surroundings and to be aware of what’s gone on before you,” she explains. “People have been here for thousands of years.” Kay Campbell and her family have been preserving and protecting the largest pictograph site in Texas since the mid1870s. Later, Campbell leads a walking tour along nearly half a mile of a limestone bluff about 70 feet high and just a few hundred
yards from the Concho River. The bluff is covered with more than 1,500 pictographs. Red, yellow, orange, black and white drawings include animal and human figures, handprints, tally marks and geometric shapes. Campbell points out the various images and interprets several pictographs that clearly depict a historic event. Campbell’s grandfather, Dunlap Edward Sims, grew up in Mexico, Mo., and while he had a background in agriculture, an illness kept him from working in the fields. When his parents sent him to college, Sims became interested in history and the Southern Plains Indians. “After my grandfather’s third year in college, he convinced WIN T E R 2 0 1 8 /’1 9
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family tradition of giving guided tours of the pictograph site. Campbell says it’s believed that as many as 300 different cultures may have camped in the area during a 12,000-year span. Pieces of pottery and arrow points indicate the site was a major campground. The number of pictographs and recent finds indicate the site was probably a ritual site.“It’s a place where many different cultures and beliefs are represented,” Campbell says. “Paintings have been attributed to Jumanos, and then to Apache and Tonkawa tribes, with the more recent images credited to Comanches who were in this area from the mid-1700s to the 1860s.” There are experts who can interpret these markings. “We’ve learned that these are not just careless marks,” Campbell adds. “This is a place of power and one where people put a lot of thought into what they were trying to communicate.” In the late 1980s, Kay and Fred began to notice “solar interactions” with the pictographs. In particular, Campbell noticed a ray of light lining up with the feet of a human figure so that it appeared to be walking up a line to heaven. While giving a tour in December 1996, Campbell saw a dagger of sunlight interacting with a shield-shaped picture. Gordon Houston, who has a master’s degree in astronomy and is the Schaefer Observatory director at Blinn College’s Schulenburg camsays. “As an elementary, middle and high pus, has done much research at Paint Rock. school teacher, I taught art, Spanish and According to Houston, twelve active solar language arts. I taught for 30 years and markers have been identified at Paint Rock, and it’s possible that more will never applied for a job!” They moved around West Paint Rock Excursions be discovered. (The interacYear-round, weather permitting tion of sunlight and shadow Texas, eventually returning Campbell Ranch on rock art is known as a to Paint Rock to live on their Paint Rock, TX 76866 (325) 732-4376 “solar marker.”) portion of the original Sims Ranch that includes the pic- Guided tours by appointment only Although Fred passed — call to schedule away in 2017, Kay Sims tographs. “We’re motivated $6 per person, Campbell continues to welto preserve and protect the minimum charge $15 come tourists, school groups pictographs,” Fred told the and scientists; throughout San Angelo Standard-Times, “and to continue learning more about the year she averages a tour a day. “My family appreciates our responsibility to be good them.” The pictographs have always held a stewards of this site and to keep it possible place of importance in Kay Campbell’s life. for future generations to visit,” she says. “It’s Through the years, she’s heard theories of important to understand what’s gone on what the rock art symbols mean. And for before, and it’s important to share what you more than 60 years, she’s continued the know.” department recommended Campbell for a position to head up the girl’s art department in Clayton, N.M. She interviewed for the post and was hired. “I was such an idiot 20-year-old girl!” Campbell laughs and says. “I cannot imagine how I had that much nerve!” While teaching in New Mexico, Fred came to visit, and shortly thereafter Kay and Fred married. “I never finished my master’s degree but pursued certifications,” Campbell
CULTURAL AMALGAM: While the majority of Paint Rock art (opposite page) was drawn by nomadic bands of hunters and gatherers, artifacts such as pottery, arrow points, musket balls and bone fragments found on the property are believed to be 900 to 1,000 years old, and indicate that some groups occupied the site for a considerable time. “Many different cultures and beliefs are represented here,” Campbell (above) says, “so it’s hard to just put them into one ‘Indian’ group.”
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several friends to travel with him by train to Fort Worth,” Campbell says. “Once they got there, grandfather Sims purchased a wagon and team of oxen and, with his companions, headed west.” Sims had learned the pictographs were documented on old maps from Spanish missionaries. “When he found this site, some of the drawings had already been defaced,” Campbell says. “It’s typical evidence of cultural clash with one group trying to do away with the remnants of another group. My grandfather bought this place to protect what he knew was historically important.” With help from his older brother, Sims opened a store in the Paint Rock community in 1878 but immediately started buying land along the Concho River as it became available. By 1886 Sims owned about 14,000 acres, including the Paint Rock limestone cliffs. Three years later, Sims went back to Missouri and married his childhood sweetheart, Ella LeCompte. They had five children, including Benjamin “Ben” Victor Sims, Kay’s father. In 1920, Ben married Ellen Hartgrove, and they had four children: Dunlap “Dunny” Sims, Benjamin “Ben” Orland Sims, William “Bill” McKinnie Sims and, on Aug. 12, 1927, Cora Ellen “Kay” Sims. Just a few years later, during the Great Depression, Campbell’s father died. Her maternal grandmother moved in to help with the children while grandfather Sims showed her mother how to run the ranch. As people showed an interest in the pictographs, members of the Sims family would lead tours of the site. Campbell’s mother began taking her to see the pictographs when she was 9 years old. At 16, Campbell graduated from Paint Rock High School. She was the only girl in her class and was valedictorian; Fred Campbell, whom Kay had dated since she was 13, was salutatorian. While Fred went into the Navy before attending Texas A&M, Kay attended Texas Christian University. By 19, she’d completed requirements for her Bachelor of Arts degree, but she decided to remain for graduate studies and to work in the art department. There, the head of the
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Good IN
Faith
Franciscan friars constructed missions across Texas for both religious and vocational purposes by MACY HURWITZ
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TRANSPLANTED: Jewish immigrants fleeing anti-Semitic violence were brought to the United States through Galveston between 1907 and 1914.
land was given to the Christianized Native Americans. Eventually, the protection of the presidios wasn’t enough to keep the influx of immigrant farmers and ranchers from taking much of this land from Native Americans. Catholicism continues to be a prevalent faith in Texas, and it’s far from singlefaceted. Throughout the history of the state, waves of Catholic immigrants from Ireland, Germany, Poland and other European countries brought different perspectives to the rich culture of Texas Catholicism. Macy Hurwitz is the Communications Officer for the Texas State Library and Archives Commission
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community that more closely mirrored the AITH IS CENTRAL to the story of Texas. One of the most way of life in Spain. The church and government of Spain iconic scenes in the story of our state took place at the were so intertwined at the time that it was Misión de San Antonio de natural for the missions to provide both Valero which, in case you’ve forgotten, is also religious and vocational education. Native Americans learned how to worreferred to as the Alamo. The Alamo was but one ship according to the teaching Texas State Library and Archives of many missions that dotof the friars and the customs of Commission ted the landscape of Texas. the colonists. This was all done 1201 Brazos St. From 1632 to 1793, Spaniards under the watchful eye of the Austin, TX 78711 Spanish government. built missions and presidios, (512) 463-5455 www.tsl.texas.gov Once the mission had military forts, as far west as transitioned the community to El Paso and as far east as HOURS Mon.–Fri. 8 am–5 pm conform to the expectations of what is now Louisiana. The Franciscan friars who built the Second Saturdays 9 am–4 pm the Spaniards, the mission was “secularized,” therefore losing missions did so to spread their its mission status and establishfaith “first, last and always,” ing the settlement fully as part of colonial according to scholar Herbert E. Bolton. Converting Native Americans to the Spanish society. The missions were all secularized by Catholic faith might have been the first priority for the friars, but the missions also 1830, minus the El Paso mission, which served as vocational learning centers where wasn’t handed over to local clergy until 1852. Native Americans were taught the skills The process of secularization meant the necessary to create and sustain a colonial friars were replaced by local priests, and the
WILLIAM DEMING HORNADAY PHOTOGRAPH COLLECTION/ TEXAS STATE LIBRARY AND ARCHIVES COMMISSION
THE FAITH OF TEXAS has never
been singular. The people of Texas have practiced their faith in ways as diverse as the Texas landscape, from the numerous tribal religions and spiritual practices of precolonial times to the mix of religions that Texans from all over the world brought with them to shape today’s vibrant culture of faith. Christianity is, by far, the largest religious tradition in Texas, even today. In 2014, more than 70 percent of the Texans surveyed identified as a Christian. But even in centuries past, there were Texans who worshipped in other ways. The first Jews came to Texas at around the same time
as the first Christians, though in much smaller numbers. However, between 1907 and 1914, there was a coordinated effort called the Galveston Movement to bring Jewish immigrants fleeing antiSemitic violence in eastern Europe and Russia through Galveston rather than the more populated ports of entry in the Northeastern United States. Many feared that an influx of Jewish immigrants would lead to an increase in anti-Semitism and immigration restrictions as a result. Several groups, including the Jewish Immigrants’ Information Bureau, collaborated to bring 10,000 Jews to the United States through Galveston between 1907 and 1914.
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LEGACY HISTORIES
Spiritual
AWAKENING The state’s religious history is as diverse as its people by JOHN W. STOREY
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IN GOOD FAITH: While religious life in Texas has been dominated by Protestantism since the early nineteenth century, Catholicism was first to spread throughout the reigion. Though Moses Austin, father of Stephen F. Austin (right), was baptized as a Protestant by a Congregational minister, he assured Spanish authorities in 1820 that he was a Catholic. Likewise, his son, a Jeffersonian Deist, was baptized by a Catholic priest in 1833.
LTHOUGH IT’S TEMPTING
to think of Texas as different from the rest of the nation, the state’s religious development doesn’t sustain a claim to uniqueness. The Catholic Church was the established religion of Texas until late in the Mexican era, but then declined after the Texas Revolution and remained at a low ebb until sufficient Catholic immigrants arrived from Germany, Ireland and elsewhere. Otherwise, beginning with the arrival of sizable numbers of Anglo-Americans in the 1820s, Texas has reflected impulses typical of Protestantism in America at large, such as the desire for a Christian Sabbath; an effective educational system that operated in tandem with the churches to promote public morality; “temperance,” by which was meant prohibition; and an intense hostility toward Catholicism. But Texas was also an extension of the South, and that too has been apparent in its religious ethos, which has generally placed piety and the need for individual redemption ahead of social ethics and the need for corporate morality. Still, like the Catholic Church, Protestant churches in Texas have by no means been oblivious to social concerns. On the contrary, they’ve been civilizing influences for both the individual and society. They’ve brought neighbors together in worship, given purpose to life, contributed to a sense of community, promoted sobriety, supported education, encouraged thoughtful discussion on a wide range of societal interests, and helped establish order. Although Protestantism has dominated the religious life of Texas since the mid-1830s, Catholicism was first to penetrate the region. Franciscans entered Texas to Christianize as well as Hispanicize the Indians. Spanish missions, established over a period of more than a century, numbered about 40 and were scattered from Nacogdoches to San Antonio to near the site of Menard. A few endured for more than 100 years, but many lasted only a year or so; seldom were more than 12 in operation at the same time, and virtually all were in disarray by 1800. An invaluable body of literature about the original tribes of Texas is an important legacy of these early outposts of Christianity. Until almost the end of Mexican Texas, Anglo-Americans seeking permis-
sion to settle in Texas had to accept the Catholic faith. Moses Austin and Stephen F. Austin, neither of whom seems to have taken organized religion too seriously, readily complied. Although baptized at birth by a Congregational minister in Durham, Conn., the elder Austin assured Spanish authorities in December 1820 in San Antonio that he was “a Catholic.” The son, actually a Jeffersonian Deist who was never formally affiliated with any religious body, likewise satisfied Mexican officials of his Catholicism. Sam Houston was baptized by a priest in 1833. Lured primarily by economic opportunity, early American settlers obviously could wear whatever religious garb was required. As Col. John Hawkins informed Stephen Austin in 1824, “I can be as good a Christian there [in Texas] as I can here [in Missouri]. It is only a name anyhow.” For settlers who took oaths more seriously than Hawkins, there was a solution of sorts: an affirmation of one’s Christianity usually sufficed. Stephen F. Austin apparently found it useful to assure Mexican officials that his colonists were
good “Christians,” but to his credit he earnestly sought to obey Mexico’s religious laws. He repeatedly reminded prospective settlers of the law and tried to avoid trouble by keeping Protestant missionaries out of his colonies. Of special concern were the aggressively evangelistic Methodists, whom Austin called “excited,” “imprudent,” “fanatic,” “violent” and “noisy.” Apparently it was the missionary Henry Stephenson who prompted Austin’s outburst that “one Methodist preacher” would cause more harm for his colony “than a dozen horsethieves.” Austin was rightly convinced WIN T E R 2 0 1 8 /’1 9
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that if Protestant evangelists could be held at bay, Mexican authorities would probably ignore private worship services in the homes of Protestants. In fact, Mexican authorities never rigorously enforced the law proscribing Protestant worship. To be sure, Protestant preachers, such as the Baptist Joseph L. Bays, were sometimes arrested, but the attitude of Col. José de las Piedras, the commandant at Nacogdoches, was typical. When informed of a Methodist-Presbyterian camp meeting in 1832, Piedras retorted that unless the worshippers were stealing horses or killing people, they were to be left alone. Furthermore, the shortage of Catholic clergy had left a spiritual vacuum that Protestants were eager to fill. From 1810, when the Mexican War of Independence erupted, to 1830, the number of priests in Mexico declined by about 50 percent, and from 1821 to 1836 there was no bishop in Monterrey, the seat of the diocese that included Texas. As late as 1835 there was only two secular (i.e., diocesan) priests in Texas. Accordingly, Austin’s repeated pleas to Mexico for priests to perform baptisms, marriages and burials brought little more than sympathetic responses. In 1831 Father Michael Muldoon appeared, but his brief stay in San Felipe perhaps served more to confirm the latent hostility of Protestant Texans toward Catholicism than anything else. Muldoon charged $25 for a wedding and $2 for a baptism, and administered the sacraments on an assembly-line basis. The scarcity of Catholic priests and the absence of Protestant churches combined to produce religious apathy in colonial Texas. Among Anglos, church membership, whether Catholic or Protestant, was negligible, and Sunday was more an occasion for fun and frolic than a time for contemplating eternal truths. An observer wrote in 1831 that Texans “seem to have forgotten that there is such a commandment as ‘Remember the Sabbath day and keep it holy,’” for they spent the day “visiting, driving stock and breaking mustangs.” This secular atmosphere obviously pleased some Texans. In 1830, for instance, one early settler approvingly remarked that the region was free of “the shameless strife and animosities” that ordinarily accompanied “the cause of true religion.” He continued: “We hear no ravings, and see no rompings, or indecorous and indecent exhibitions under the cloak of a religious assemblage.” Of course, the more appalling the reports about religious conditions in Texas, the greater the excitement of evangelical Protestants in the United States. As one scholar aptly 84
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observed, the Texas frontier offered an arena in which the godly could battle “the Devil on his own ground.” Here was a rugged country where sinners could be snatched from Satan’s grasp, a godless society redeemed, and permanent institutions established to carry the struggle against evil into the future. So in defiance of Mexican law, zealous Protestant missionaries furtively slipped into Texas. Near Pecan Point, the Methodist William Stevenson preached the first Protestant sermon in Northeast Texas in 1815. Five years later Bays crossed the Sabine River into east Texas, followed by Sumner Bacon, a Cumberland Presbyterian, in 1829. John W. Cloudq, an Episcopalian, was at Brazoria by 1831. Two groups, similar in many ways — Primitive Baptists and Disciples of Christ — brought congregations organized elsewhere into Texas. The Two-Seed in the Spirit Pilgrim Church of Predestinarian Regular Baptists, formed with seven members in Illinois by Daniel Parker in July 1833, moved to a site near La Grange, Fayette County, in January 1834. These anti-missionary Baptists were intensely Calvinistic and fiercely committed to congregational purity. Led by Mansell W. Matthews and Lynn D’Spain, the first Disciples of Christ congregation arrived at Clarksville by way of Alabama, Mississippi and Tennessee in January 1836. For these followers of Alexander Campbell who wished to “restore” Christianity to its supposed New Testament unity and simplicity, Texas surely posed a mighty challenge. By 1836, with Methodists far ahead of everyone else, Protestant activity was already fairly common in the areas around Nacogdoches — San Augustine, San Felipe and Houston — Galveston, and at least 33 ministers were in the field — 12 Methodists, 13 Baptists, three Cumberland Presbyterians, three regular Presbyterians, one Episcopal and one Disciple. Although cited in the Texas Declaration of Independence, religion was not a contributing factor to the Texas Revolution. But Texas independence certainly contributed to the advancement of Protestantism. Suddenly freed of all legal restraints, Protestants rapidly sprawled across the new Republic of Texas. By the late 1840s the state had become a grid of Methodist circuits and conferences, Baptist associations and conventions, Presbyterian presbyteries, and Episcopal parishes of the Diocese of Texas. Like those “upstart towns” described by historian Daniel Boorstin, these were upstart denominations that busily forged organizational structures and aggressively
promoted themselves through camp meetings, newspapers, and schools. Methodists, Baptists and Cumberland Presbyterians depended heavily upon protracted camp meetings to kindle spiritual fires. Playing upon the emotions, enthusiastic evangelists graphically contrasted the horrors of hell to the joys of heavenly paradise, and aroused penitents often were overcome by excitement. A Houston meeting in fall 1845 prompted the criticism that “no pen or tongue could give … an adequate description of these riotous scenes — a person must see and hear in order to be convinced of their mad extravagancies....[And] they call it revival.” Such disparagement notwithstanding, camp revivals, often lasting two to four weeks, served both religious and social needs. They brought a reprieve from the loneliness and tedium of rural and small-town Texas life. This was particularly the case for women, for whom the daily routine was monotonous and exacting. To maintain regular contact with scattered congregations, Methodists and Presbyterians used itinerant preachers, or circuit riders. This method had advantages as well as disadvantages. Though it enabled a small number of trained clergymen to minister to numerous isolated communities, thereby significantly extending denominational influence, it also enabled congregations to avoid making the necessary financial arrangements to support resident pastors. By contrast, Baptists encouraged obtaining local pastors, an objective accomplished all too frequently with poorly educated men or laymen. Along with camp meetings and traveling parsons, newspapers afforded another means of keeping in touch with the faithful. The religious press added a new dimension to denominational “outreach” in the 1840s and 1850s. One who readily grasped the principle was George Washington Baines, editor of the Texas Baptist from 1855 to 1861. Baines asserted that an “ably edited … neatly printed and widely circulated” religious paper allowed one to speak “week after week … to twice as many thousands as … to hundreds in any other way.” With publication of the Texas Presbyterian in November 1846, the Cumberland Presbyterians were first into this field. They were followed in 1847 by the Methodists and their Texas Christian Advocate and Brenham General Advertiser. The Old School Presbyterians issued The Panoplist and Presbyterian of Texas in 1855, the year that Baines printed the first copy
of the Baptist paper. Not until 1884 did the Disciples of Christ launch the Firm Foundation, which was followed six years later by the Episcopalians’ Diocese of Texas and the Catholics’ Texas Catholic. These early religious papers were for the most part privately owned, risky ventures. Many of them failed, others merged and relocated to more promising locales, and all served partisan denominational and evangelistic interests. The tie between religious journalism and evangelism in the 1840s and 1850s is exemplified by Methodist efforts among German Catholic immigrants. Fueled, it seems, as much by patriotic fervor as religious zeal, Methodists embarked upon a concerted effort to Americanize and Christianize these “priest-ridden” newcomers. They established missions at Galveston, the port of entry, Houston and, eventually, New Braunfels, and in July 1855 began printing Der Deutsche Christliche Apologete, Southern Methodism’s only German-language paper. Concerns about Christian fidelity and national loyalty clearly coalesced in the Apologete. “The only way to make these Germans good American citizens,” announced one promoter of the paper, “is to furnish them with sound protestant reading.” Although Texas Protestants, especially Methodists, Baptists and Cumberland Presbyterians, were interested primarily in personal evangelism, they also devoted some attention to such social matters as education, slavery and temperance. That Texas was in dire need of temperance was immediately obvious to Martin Ruter, the superintendent of the Methodist Texas Mission, upon his arrival in 1837. Texans had already acquired a reputation for unruliness, and Ruter believed alcohol was partly to blame. Calling attention to the problem of public drunkenness in 1838, he declared “profaneness, gaming, and intemperance” to be the “prevailing vices against which” Texans had “to contend.” Methodist, Baptist and Presbyterian ministers subsequently took the initiative in the war against John Barleycorn. In February 1839 William Y. Allen, an Old School Presbyterian, joined others in founding the Texas Temperance Society at Houston. A featured speaker on this occasion was Sam Houston, whose drinking was well known. Sam Corley, a Cumberland Presbyterian in Northeast Texas, soon joined Allen. The Sons of Temperance, a national organization, entered the state in 1848 and within a year claimed 3,000 members; almost every small town and many rural communities had a local chapter by 1851. Although the state legislature passed a few bills dealing
with alcohol in the 1850s, the temperance crusade was just beginning. Nothing less than total prohibition would be acceptable to many clerics. All the Texas churches valued learning, and so they began establishing schools at an early date. The Catholic Church had conducted schools at missions from the beginning of Texas mission history. Much later, in 1829, Protestant Sunday schools appeared in Austin’s colony. Thomas J. Pilgrim, a Baptist layman from New York, initiated the movement at San Felipe. Although Pilgrim’s bold affront to Mexican law brought swift action, he later resumed his efforts. Allen joined the cause, and by 1838 Sunday schools were operating in Houston, San Augustine, Nacogdoches and Washington-on-theBrazos. The first Catholic schools after the demise of the mission schools began in the early 1840s. Except for the Disciples, all the Protestant bodies operated Sunday schools by 1860. While primarily religious in purpose, these schools generally contributed to the broader intellectual development of communities. Flourishing Sunday schools generated an interest in libraries and academic institutions in general. The American Sunday School Union, for instance, maintained libraries with more than 1,000 volumes in Brownsville and Austin. As for the academic needs of elementary, secondary and college students, the churches founded a multitude of academies, institutes, colleges and universities. Between 1836 and 1845 the republic chartered 19 educational institutions, and between 1845 and 1861 the state authorized 117 more. Credit for the vast majority of these facilities goes to Methodists, Baptists, Presbyterians, Catholics, Lutherans and Episcopalians. Most of these institutions, which were of varied scholastic respectability, sooner or later failed; many were moved, some were consolidated, and all bore the imprint of their respective denominations. Seeking “to drive away the dark clouds of ignorance and superstition and gild the path of Baptists to a brighter and purer and higher state of excellence,” as one report read, Baptists alone founded 14 schools between 1845 and 1860 and added another 25 between 1861 and 1900. In January 1840 the Methodists opened the first Protestant college in Texas, Rutersville College near La Grange, Fayette County. The college, appropriately named in honor of Martin Ruter, was the state’s leading educational center until about 1850.
Meanwhile, in 1845 the Baptists established Baylor University at Independence, and by the late 1850s it was granting more degrees than all other Texas colleges combined. In 1886 Baylor was moved to Waco and merged with Waco University, which Central Texas Baptists had founded on a coeducational basis in 1861. The Disciples of Christ didn’t establish a college before the Civil War; they founded Add-Ran College, later Texas Christian University, in September 1873. Before 1861 the Catholic Church had founded at least two institutions that became universities; after the Civil War, Catholic academies, parochial schools and institutions of higher learning multiplied rapidly. Religiously inspired centers of higher education did considerably more than indoctrinate future clergymen. They cultivated civic-mindedness by encouraging students to become involved in the political process; nurtured, within limits, a spirit of critical inquiry; promoted academic opportunities for women, often as coeds; and increased literacy. By 1860, among the state’s whites, illiteracy was under 4 percent for men and just over 5 percent for women. On the overriding concern of the 1850s, slavery, Texas Protestants, as well as Catholics, were heirs of the Old South. With few exceptions, they defended servitude, saw African Americans as innately inferior, believed evangelization rather than emancipation fulfilled their spiritual obligations to the slaves, justified secession and supplied chaplains for the Confederacy. A Cumberland Presbyterian probably spoke for most Texans in 1860. “God in the creation of the Negro,” he proclaimed, “I think, designed him for a secondary sphere in society that is a sphere of labor and servitude.” With regard to race, the churches in Texas reflected rather than shaped public opinion. Exceptions caused intolerance. Those German Catholics who adopted a resolution opposing slavery in 1854, for instance, only confirmed the suspicion of Anglo-Texans that the German Catholics were neither Christian nor loyal to the state. Likewise, when Aaron Grigsby, pastor of the Cumberland Presbyterian Church in Jefferson, voiced abolitionist sentiments on the eve of secession, harassment forced him to flee. And in September 1860, when Anthony Bewley, a Northern Methodist missionary, was lynched near Dallas for allegedly encouraging slave insurrections in North Texas, unrepentant Southern Methodists hinted that he had gotten what he deserved. Splits over slavery had occurred within all WIN T E R 2 0 1 8 /’1 9
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Church in Texas fled or became second-class residents, associated as they were with the Mexican enemy. But Catholics never abandoned the field, although the republic posed a problem for the Vatican. To recognize Texas independence would be to offend Catholic Mexico, while not to recognize it would risk the loss of all influence in the new nation. The Vatican never officially acknowledged the republic, but its continuing interest in the region was apparent. It redirected its oversight through Louisiana instead of Mexico. Father John Timon, a Vincentian from New Orleans, surveyed Texas in 1838. Soon thereafter Jean Marie Odin, also a Vincentian, was given leadership; in the 1840s he assembled a cadre of able priests who labored productively among the growing numbers of Germans and Irish. In 1847 Odin became the bishop of the newly formed Diocese of Galveston, which encompassed all of Texas. By 1861,
either white churches, where they usually sat in the balcony or rear, or separate services presided over by whites. These arrangements had satisfied the moral obligation of white Christians to share the Gospel with slaves, while dramatizing the blacks’ inferiority. Emancipation brought a problem. Should the former slaves be encouraged to stay in white churches? If so, should they be invited to come down from the balconies, engage in church discussions and share authority with their former owners? In fact, white churches of Texas were generally no more willing than those elsewhere in the South to embrace blacks as equals. That would have been far more revolutionary than emancipation. Even so, white congregations were sharply divided during the early Reconstruction years over the retention of blacks, and the ensuing debate disclosed unspiritual motives. The white Protestants feared that if unlettered blacks LIBERATION THEOLOGY: The Concord School at Round Top, Texas, late nineteenth century. Following the Civil War, some blacks withdrew from whitecontrolled churches to establish their own institutions.
when he left that post to become the archbishop of New Orleans, the Catholic Church was on the rebound in Texas. The church had 40 priests, one college and a number of resident religious orders. The Ursuline Sisters of Galveston, for instance, earned praise for their care of wounded soldiers during the Civil War. If Texans of Mexican descent have overwhelmingly been Catholics, the state’s African Americans have just as overwhelming been Baptists. In 1860 blacks constituted slightly more than 30 percent of the Texas population, and in 1900 about 20 percent. For white Christians, this African-American concentration simultaneously represented an evangelistic opportunity and a source of alarm. Although black preachers and separate black congregations could be found in antebellum Texas, slaves had generally attended
were removed from white congregations, they would not only slip into scriptural error but also fall prey to the flattery of Northern politicians and Catholic priests. In 1868 a Houston Baptist put the case bluntly: to exclude freedmen from white churches would leave them vulnerable “to the combined evil of ignorance, superstition, fanaticism and a political propagandism more dangerous and destructive to the best interests of both whites and blacks than Jesuitism itself.” Supposed Christian duty as well as self-interest, then, compelled white congregations to “retain the Negroes … and control their action” to a certain extent. Just as the antebellum churches had often effected social control by admonishing slaves to be faithful to their masters, they wanted control after emancipation. Eager to test their new freedom, however, African Americans quickly rendered the debate moot. They withdrew en masse from white-controlled bodies and forged independent institutions. Illustrative was the Trinity Methodist Episcopal Church, Houston’s first black congregation. The first
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the major religious bodies by 1861 except for the Disciples and Catholics. But this was no sign of opposition to slavery by these bodies among Southerners. Rather, it reflected, on one hand, Alexander Campbell’s success at preventing slavery from becoming a test of church membership, something Presbyterians had attempted but eventually failed to achieve. On the other hand, it would have been difficult for so loosely structured a group as the Disciples to separate. By 1861, with 30,661 members and 410 church buildings, Methodists still remained far ahead of all other religious bodies in the state. With 500 congregations and 280 buildings, Baptists were a distant second. Next came the Cumberland Presbyterians with 6,200 members and 155 places of worship. The other groups were all considerably smaller. The Disciples, who grew dramatically in the 1850s, now had 39 churches, followed by Catholics (33) and Episcopalians (19). Although their growth was impressive, the churches were barely holding their own in comparison to the increase in the general population. Of the 604,215 Texas residents in 1860, no more than about 12 percent were affiliated with any organized religion. By 1906, however, significant changes had occurred. Baptists now represented some 33 percent of the church-going public, and the Methodists had declined to 27 percent. Only slightly behind Methodists were the Catholics, whose extraordinary progress in the latter nineteenth century was due not only to an influx of Germans, Czechs, Poles, French and Mexicans, but also to vigorous efforts by the church. The Disciples, composing about 7 percent of the state’s church members, slipped ahead of the Presbyterians, whose adherents totaled approximately 5 percent. Lutherans, Episcopalians and several smaller communions completed the picture. The resurgence of Catholicism in the latter nineteenth century is particularly noteworthy. The shortage of priests and the enormous influx of Americans after Texas independence had promoted Protestant ascendancy. Already poised at the northern and eastern borders, evangelistic Methodists, Baptists, Presbyterians and Disciples swiftly entered and claimed the terrain as their own, while the Hispanics who’d constituted the Catholic
Methodist church in Houston had been organized in 1841 with 68 members, almost half of whom were either slaves or free blacks. By the early 1850s the blacks had begun to worship in a separate structure, albeit under a white pastor. From this situation emerged Trinity Church in 1867. Probably because of Baptist democratic polity and congregational autonomy, the overwhelming majority of blacks became Baptists after the Civil War. By 1890 black Baptists numbered 111,138 statewide, while Methodists totaled only 42,214. In 1916 Baptists constituted almost 72 percent of all black church members. This concentration continued. Of the 351,305 African-American church members in 1926, 234,056 were Baptists and 87,926 were Methodists. There were only a few black Catholics, Presbyterians and so on. Though it is generally agreed that religion was vital to African Americans, there is much less agreement among scholars about the precise function of the church in their culture. Was the church basically a vessel for enduring aspects of African culture, with the black minister little more than a modern shaman? Was it an example of folk religion, preserving superstitions and practices that had little basis in historic Christianity? Or was it, by virtue of its service to an oppressed people, a truer reflection of Christian ideals than the prosperous, secularized white churches? Was it an aggressive agency in the quest for freedom? Were Negro spirituals subtle protest songs and ministers freedom fighters? Although historians still wrangle over these questions, they usually acknowledge that the black church, which afforded religious, educational, social, recreational and political opportunities denied blacks in the nation at large, has certainly been an alternative society of sorts. Black congregations in Houston illustrate the point. Seeking to meet the political, recreational and educational needs of the city’s black population, Antioch Baptist Church, founded in 1866, helped organize the Harris County Republican Club in 1869, and three years later joined hands with Trinity Methodist to buy property for Emancipation Park. In 1885 Jack ( John Henry) Yates, pastor at Antioch, worked with white missionaries to establish Houston College. Among individual blacks who attained prominence in the religious community was the former slave Richard Henry Boyd, a cowboy and mill hand turned preacher. As much as possible, he wanted African Americans to control their own religious and educational endeavors. To that end,
in 1897 he organized the National Baptist Publishing Board, which printed materials exclusively for blacks. As for fiery evangelists, Texas blacks had their own Billy Sundays in the likes of J. Gordon McPherson and J. L. “Sin Killer” Griffin. The separation of blacks from white churches was paralleled in the late nineteenth century by an emerging concern over “modernist” influences. Thoroughly conservative in theology, most Texas churches were undisturbed by the winds of intellectual change. Nevertheless, a modest freethought movement had taken root in the state’s Protestant churches by the early 1880s, and a popular Methodist minister was at its center. After being accused of heretical notions about the Bible and the basic tenets of Christianity, James D. Shaw, pastor of the Fifth Street Methodist Church in Waco, was stripped of his credentials in November 1882. He promptly founded the Religious and Benevolent Association, dubbed the “Hell and Damnation Society” by one critic, and in early 1883 launched the Independent Pulpit, whose columns carried “the views of … independent thinkers on the moral, intellectual and social questions of the day.” A prominent Baptist preacher from nearby Alvarado, Henry C. Renfro, was drawn to the movement, and he, too, was defrocked in February 1884. By the 1920s, as perceived tension between science and religion reached something of a climax, a rigid, intolerant variety of fundamentalism had arisen. Gripped by a beleaguered-fortress mentality, religionists of this persuasion lashed out at imagined enemies. In this climate, only an overriding concern for denominational harmony saved Lee W. Heaton, an Episcopal minister in Fort Worth, from a heresy trial in 1923. The Presbyterian pastor H. G. Kenny was not so fortunate. Among Methodists and Baptists, the conflict focused on college campuses, and J. Frank Norris, pastor of the First Baptist Church, Fort Worth, and a fundamentalist of national stature, proved his ecumenism by hurling charges at professors in both denominations. Except for McMurry in Abilene, all the Methodist colleges came under attack in the 1920s. At Southern Methodist University in Dallas, Norris joined others in faulting scholar John A. Rice for his book, The Old Testament in the Life of Today. And at Baylor University, Professor Grove Samuel Dow, head of the sociology department, was assailed for his Introduction to the Principles of Sociology. Norris was his principal tor-
mentor. That Texas churches and schools weathered the fundamentalist siege, and that Norris eventually was expelled from almost every Baptist body in the state, attests to the moderate nature of the state’s religious leadership. Most church leaders and members, especially Baptists and Methodists, were profoundly conservative in theological and social views, but they weren’t fundamentalists after the fashion of Norris. Disputes over “modernism” aside, Norris and moderate Protestants easily agreed on temperance, a movement that had steadily gained momentum in the latter nineteenth century. By 1901 a prominent Texas Baptist even applauded the hatchet-wielding antics of Mrs. Carry Nation of Kansas, rationalizing “that the only way to annihilate the saloon is to meet lawlessness with lawlessness.” The failure of the Anglo-Protestant majority to achieve statewide prohibition until 1919, however, and then only after World War I and the national momentum for a constitutional amendment, forces a reconsideration of the alleged homogeneity of Texas religion. Baptist and Methodist pervasiveness notwithstanding, religious homogeneity was increasingly more apparent than real by the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. In addition to Catholicism, whose Mexican, German, French, Irish and Italian adherents represented cultural traditions in conflict with Anglo-Protestants on alcoholic consumption, Protestantism itself betrayed deep internal cleavages. Among Baptists, for instance, there were communicants of differing socioeconomic status and varying opinions on the degree of congregational autonomy and the proper means of achieving prohibition. Primitive and Landmark Baptists often took exception to legislated, statewide prohibition because they considered local option more consistent with Baptist tradition. A cursory examination of Texas Baptist life in the late nineteenth century, moreover, would also suggest that controversy was a hallmark of the faith. Within Methodism, the Holiness movement revealed tensions between the church’s leaders and a segment of the laity. As for the state’s Anglo-Protestant political leaders, some favored prohibition, some opposed it. So despite an overwhelming numerical superiority and a seeming homogeneity, Texas Protestants were divided, as the tardy arrival of prohibition suggests. Although legal success against John Barleycorn came late, the crusade itself was significant in that it brought many church people to social awareness. By 1908, for WIN T E R 2 0 1 8 /’1 9
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endorsed bilingual education, sanctioned taxsupported public schooling for the children of illegal aliens, commended programs to rehabilitate Texas prison inmates and advocated energy conservation. Among Texas Catholics, Archbishop Robert E. Lucey of San Antonio (1941– 69) was one counterpart to this movement. Though thoroughly traditional on matters of church authority, Lucey consistently placed the church on the side of the poor. He championed labor’s right to unionize, and within his archdiocese wouldn’t permit the use of nonunion laborers for church construction. In support of desegregation, he integrated parochial schools in San Antonio months before
SHIFTING DEMOGRAPHICS: A Pew Research Study in 2015 found that Texans are less likely to identify with a specific religion than in years past. A larger percentage of Texans than in previous polls — 18 percent — identified their religion as “none.”
Significantly, Texas Baptists gave institutional voice to Dawson’s concerns. In 1915 the General Convention established the Social Service Committee, and two years later this committee justified its social emphasis with the exuberant proclamation that “Jesus [Himself] was the great sociologist.” From this modest beginning emerged the Christian Life Commission in 1950. Inspired in large measure by Professor Thomas B. Maston of Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary, this was an activist body dedicated to applied Christianity. Its interests have been a reflection of modern American society. It objected to universal military training in the early 1950s, regularly defended the desegregation and school-prayer rulings of the Supreme Court in the 1950s and early 1960s, approved abortion under limited circumstances, supported sex education, urged a settlement to the Vietnam conflict, grappled with drug abuse, upheld the principle that people were “more important than profit,” encouraged businesses to face the problem of air and water pollution, censured “raw violence” and gratuitous sex on television, 88
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the decision in Brown v. Board of Education (1954). And in the 1960s, farm workers in the Rio Grande valley absorbed his attention. Catholics institutionalized social action in numerous organizations. In 1969, for instance, the Archdiocese of San Antonio founded the Commission on Church and Society, an agency dedicated to racial justice, equality of economic opportunity, job development, and better housing and health services. In the late twentieth and twenty-first centuries, there’s been both change and continuity in the state’s religious heritage. Most apparent has been the erosion of the secular milieu appreciated by so many Texans of the 1830s or so. Organized religion has grown
steadily stronger, and the major denominations today sustain an impressive array of schools, hospitals and eleemosynary institutions. The Dallas-Fort Worth area alone hosts several seminaries — Perkins School of Theology at Southern Methodist University in Dallas, Brite Divinity School at Texas Christian University in Fort Worth, Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary in Fort Worth (the world’s largest seminary) and Dallas Theological Seminary, which continues to promote the dispensational premillennial views of Cyrus I. Scofield. The University of Dallas trains Catholic seminarians, partly under the aegis of the Cistercian Fathers. As for individual Texans, they’re decidedly more religious than their ancestors. Indeed, Texans today belong to organized religious bodies in greater percentages than Americans at large. And quite unlike many of those early settlers, contemporary residents actually take religion seriously, as evidenced by polls. Although only about 40 percent of the population attends church weekly, with Baptists and Catholics being the most frequent, 70 percent reportedly consider religion very important. One can only wonder what Col. John Hawkins would make of such religiosity. Most of the state’s worshipers are still Protestants, but the configuration has changed considerably in the past century. The Methodist Church, which dominated the landscape from the 1830s through the late nineteenth century, slipped to third behind Catholics and Baptists. Denominationally, the twentieth century belonged to the Baptist Church until 1990, when it was overcome by Catholics. Numerous other bodies, though considerably smaller, function in the state: the Church of Christ, the Lutheran Church, the Pentecostal churches, the Presbyterian Church, the Protestant Episcopal Church, the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ), Mormons, Jews, and some Muslims, Hindus and adherents of Buddhism. In this new millennium, Catholics and Baptists are sharing the terrain with seekers of many persuasions. John W. Storey retired from Lamar University in 2011 after a distinguished career as a scholar of American religious history. He wrote this piece for the Handbook of Texas, and it is reprinted here with permission of the Texas State Historical Association.
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instance, the Baptist General Convention of Texas, convinced that the tavern was “interlaced … into commerce, politics, society and the administration of law,” challenged the churches to become more active politically and alert socially. Accordingly, there were expressions of the social gospel in Texas by the early 1900s. Methodists and Baptists prove the point, but Baptists are particularly instructive, for they demonstrate the fallacy of the popular assumption that social Christianity was a by-product of northern liberal theology. Despite their intense evangelism and conservative theological views, Baptists increasingly found ample basis for applying the Good News to society. The best exemplar was Joseph Martin Dawson. This longtime (1915–46) pastor of the First Baptist Church, Waco, delivered the first formal series of sermons by a Texas Baptist on social Christianity in 1914 and went on to engage in public controversy over social problems, including racism, throughout his life.