First Presbyterian Church
Karnes City, Karnes County, Texas
Marker Inscription
Karnes City's first edifice built for Protestant worship. Housed congregation originating in 1894 as a mission under the care of Helena Presbyterians, and organized as a church with 14 members in 1895 by The Rev. H. R. Laird, evangelist of the Western Texas Presbytery. Church building was completed in June 1901. Congregation celebrated its 75th anniversary in 1970.
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
Karnes City's first building raised for Protestant worship housed a congregation that began in 1894 as a mission under the Helena Presbyterians and was organized the next year with fourteen members. The Rev. H. R. Laird, an evangelist of the Western Texas Presbytery, led its founding, and the church building was finished in June 1901. The congregation marked its 75th anniversary in 1970.
Why it matters
As the town's first Protestant sanctuary, the church marks the moment a South Texas railroad settlement put down lasting institutional roots.
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Related people
- · H. R. Laird
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
First Baptist Church of Karnes City
Karnes City, TX
This congregation began as a mission church in 1894, the same year Karnes City was founded as the new county seat. Early worshipers likely met in the schoolhouse before the first church rose in 1899, and baptisms were held in the San Antonio River or a ranch stock tank. As it grew, the church added a missionary society, Sunday school, youth groups, and even a long-running radio program, and helped plant other mission churches nearby.
Karnes City
Karnes City, TX
Founded in the Christmas season of 1890 when Otto Buchel's partnership bought 1,000 acres beside the San Antonio & Aransas Pass Railroad, the town was first named for Texas Ranger hero Henry W. Karnes before 'City' was added with its 1891 post office. It grew so fast that by 1894 voters moved the county seat here from Helena. In its railroad heyday six passenger trains a day rolled through a town built on ranching, farming, uranium, oil, and gas.
Town of Panna Maria
Panna Maria, TX
On Christmas Eve of 1854, the Rev. Leopold Moczygemba established Panna Maria, the oldest Polish settlement in Texas, having helped bring roughly 100 Polish peasant families across the ocean to the Karnes County prairie. The transition was hard, and within a few months many of the families scattered to seek homes elsewhere in Texas. Those who stayed rooted a Polish American community that endures on this spot.
Panna Maria, Texas
Panna Maria, TX
On Christmas Eve 1854, about a hundred Polish families from Upper Silesia and Krakow reached this spot and founded Panna Maria—the oldest permanent Polish colony in America. Led by Father Leopold Moczygemba and having contracted for land through San Antonio banker John Twohig, they had endured a nine-week ocean voyage and a 200-mile inland walk, some barefoot, carrying featherbeds and the cross from their parish church in Poland. Naming the site for the Virgin Mary, they celebrated a first Midnight Mass beneath a great oak and built their new home from mud, straw, and eventually stone.