Connell House
Stanton, Martin County, Texas
Marker Inscription
Constructed in 1882 as a two-room home for Carmelite Priests, this was the first building in Stanton. Dennis and Mary (Stoeger) Connell made their home here after their marriage in 1902. Mary bore eight children in the house, which grew with the family. By 1915 the house had five rooms, with more additions made in the 1920s and 1930s. The simple home features a distinctive west gable, weatherboard siding, a front porch with shed room and turned-wood posts, and double primary entry doors. Upon the death of the last Connell daughter in 1990 the house was transferred to the local historical museum. Recorded Texas Historic Landmark - 1997
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
Put up in 1882 as a two-room dwelling for Carmelite priests, this was the very first building in Stanton. After their 1902 marriage, Dennis and Mary Connell made it their family home, and it grew room by room as their eight children arrived, gaining porches, gables, and additions through the 1920s and 30s. When the last Connell daughter died in 1990, the much-expanded house passed to the local museum.
Why it matters
It traces the growth of a frontier West Texas town through the single oldest building that started it all.
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Related people
- · Dennis Connell
- · Mary Stoeger Connell
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
Site of St. Joseph's Church
Stanton, TX
In 1881, Carmelite monks set out to plant a monastery and a German Catholic colony on the West Texas plains, raising the first Catholic church between Fort Worth and El Paso. Adobe-and-brick buildings followed—the monastery in 1884, St. Joseph's Church in 1885—and Sisters of Divine Providence, then Sisters of Mercy, ran schools and a convent academy here. The Carmelites disbanded in 1897, and a tornado in 1938 ended the sisters' work, leaving only ruins, a dormitory, and the cemetery.
Carmelite Monastery
Stanton, TX
In 1882 six German Carmelite friars from Kansas founded a monastery at a rail stop between Fort Worth and El Paso, renaming it Marienfeld and planting a German Catholic farming colony on the West Texas plains. From this adobe building—raised in 1884 with four-foot walls and Gothic pointed-arch windows—the friars rode across West Texas and eastern New Mexico establishing parishes, and their presence helped spur the organization of Martin County. Drought and depression thinned the colony; the Carmelites left by 1901, and the Sisters of Mercy ran an academy here until a 1938 tornado.
Marienfeld
Stanton, TX
In 1881 five German Catholic settlers from Kansas pitched their tents beside the new Texas & Pacific Railroad on the West Texas plains. They renamed the railroad stop "Marienfeld," German for "Field of Mary," and the fledgling colony soon became the seat of newly organized Martin County, with its first commissioners court meeting in 1884. Later Protestant influence gave the town the name it still carries, Stanton.
Old Martin County Jail
Stanton, TX
When Martin County organized in 1884, its seat was a windswept German-colony settlement called Marienfeld, soon renamed Stanton. The county's 1885 courthouse held the original cell block, and when that building was demolished after a 1908 bond election, the cells were preserved as the heart of this new rock jail — which even included living quarters for the sheriff's family. It later found gentler second lives as a library and museum.