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First Presbyterian Church of San Antonio

San Antonio, Bexar County, Texas

Marker Inscription

In 1844 a Presbyterian, the Rev. John McCullough, and a Methodist, the Rev. John Wesley DeVilbiss, visited San Antonio and conducted the first Protestant worship service. The Board of Foreign Missions in 1846 sent the Rev. McCullough to San Antonio to organize this church. After two years the membership erected an adobe building on Commerce Street. It served as the first Protestant church house in the city. The fellowship declined in 1849, and in 1851 the Rev. Dr. Daniel Baker, founder of the Presbyterian Church in the Republic of Texas, and six members reorganized the congregation. The contract for a new church house was let in 1859, for construction on the northeast corner of Flores and Houston streets. With the beginning of the Civil War, the fellowship broke with the Presbyterian Church (USA) and building construction was halted. A storm in 1868 destroyed the adobe church building. The second house of worship was finally completed in 1879 under the leadership of the Rev. Dr. J. W. Neil. The Rev. Dr. Arthur Gray Jones led in the erection in 1910 of this Gothic Revival structure, designed by Atlee B. Ayres. In the 1920s, during the pastorate of the Rev. Dr. P.B. Hill, radio broadcasts of services began and the attached education building was completed. (1979)

Erected by Texas Historical Commission

The Story

When a Presbyterian and a Methodist minister held San Antonio's first Protestant service in 1844, they opened a new chapter in a long-Catholic city. Organized in 1846, this congregation built the city's first Protestant church house of adobe, weathered decline, a Civil War split from the national church, and a storm that toppled its early building. Successive sanctuaries followed, culminating in the 1910 Gothic Revival structure designed by noted architect Atlee B. Ayres, from which pioneering radio broadcasts of services would later air.

Why it matters

It traces the arrival of Protestant faith in a Spanish-Catholic city and the growth of religious life across frontier, war, and modern Texas.

The story behind this marker

AI context

The era

When two Protestant ministers held San Antonio's first Protestant worship service in 1844, they were stepping into a city whose spiritual life had been Roman Catholic for well over a century. San Antonio had grown up around Spanish missions and the presidio, and its churches, feast days, and rhythms were Catholic to the core. Texas itself had only recently become an independent republic, and it was still very much a frontier — a place where distances were long, institutions were thin, and newcomers were arriving from the United States and beyond.

The 1840s were a hinge moment. The Republic of Texas was courting settlers, and with them came Protestant denominations eager to plant churches on ground that had never known them. Organizing a Presbyterian congregation here in 1846 meant building something genuinely new in an old city — and doing it with almost nothing, in adobe rather than stone, on a busy commercial street.

The decades that followed would carry the young congregation through Texas's turbulent passage from republic to statehood, through the Civil War, and into the modern era. Each chapter of the church's building history is also a chapter of the city's — a frontier town growing, dividing, weathering storms both literal and political, and finally maturing into a twentieth-century city.

People & events

The congregation traces its origins to a striking act of cooperation: in 1844 a Presbyterian minister, the Reverend John McCullough, and a Methodist minister, the Reverend John Wesley DeVilbiss, together conducted the first Protestant worship in San Antonio. Two years later, a mission board sent McCullough back to formally organize this church, and within a couple of years the members had raised an adobe building on Commerce Street — the first Protestant house of worship in the city.

The road was anything but smooth. The fellowship declined by the end of the 1840s, and it took a determined revival in 1851 — led by the Reverend Dr. Daniel Baker, remembered as a founder of Presbyterianism in the Republic of Texas, together with a small band of members — to reorganize the congregation and set it on firmer ground. A new church was contracted in 1859, but the coming of the Civil War halted construction, and the congregation broke with the national Presbyterian Church. Then, in 1868, a storm destroyed the old adobe building, leaving the flock without its original home.

Recovery came step by step. A second house of worship was finally completed in 1879 under the Reverend Dr. J. W. Neil. Decades later, under the Reverend Dr. Arthur Gray Jones, the congregation raised in 1910 the Gothic Revival sanctuary designed by the noted San Antonio architect Atlee B. Ayres. In the 1920s, during the pastorate of the Reverend Dr. P. B. Hill, the church added an education building and began broadcasting its services by radio — carrying worship beyond its walls in a strikingly modern way.

Its place in the American story

This one congregation's long story mirrors the larger American drama of religious expansion and change. The arrival of Protestant worship in a Spanish-Catholic city is a vivid example of how the movement of settlers reshaped the spiritual map of the continent, planting new denominations wherever the frontier advanced. The first sermon preached by a Presbyterian and a Methodist side by side is itself a small emblem of the improvised, cooperative faith of the frontier.

The church's Civil War split echoes a national wound. Across the country, great denominations fractured along the lines of the sectional crisis, and congregations everywhere found their spiritual lives entangled with the era's most divisive questions. That this congregation broke from the national body during the war, and that its building work stopped when the fighting began, ties its local history directly to the nation's greatest test.

Finally, the church's twentieth-century chapters — a landmark Gothic Revival sanctuary by a celebrated architect, and some of the early radio broadcasts of religious services — capture how American faith communities embraced both enduring architectural tradition and cutting-edge technology. From adobe on a frontier street to voices carried over the airwaves, this is the American story of religion adapting, again and again, to a changing world.

If you visit

Stand before the Gothic Revival sanctuary and let its pointed arches and vertical lines do their work — this is architecture meant to lift the eye and the spirit, the design of a congregation that had finally arrived after decades of hardship. Knowing it was the work of Atlee B. Ayres, one of San Antonio's most accomplished architects, adds another layer to what you're seeing.

Then let your imagination reach back through the building's ancestry: the second sanctuary of 1879, and before that the first humble adobe church on Commerce Street, since lost to a storm. This is a congregation that built, lost, and rebuilt across generations, and the marker lets you trace that whole arc in a single stop.

In a city famous for its Spanish missions, this church offers a different thread of San Antonio's religious story — the arrival and growth of Protestant faith. It fits naturally into a downtown walk among the city's historic churches and civic buildings. As you go, picture a 1920s congregation gathered here while their service traveled out over the radio to listeners who could not be in the pews — an old faith meeting a brand-new age.

Written by AI to add context, grounded in the marker’s inscription and the historical record. The inscription above is the original, unaltered text.

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Related people

  • · John McCullough
  • · Daniel Baker
  • · Atlee B. Ayres

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