Notre Dame Catholic School
Kerrville, Kerr County, Texas
Marker Inscription
NOTRE DAME CATHOLIC SCHOOL Fourteen visiting priests served St. Mary’s Catholic Mission Church until 1911, when it became a parish church and Father Henry Kemper of Chicago became its resident priest. Father Kemper was ordained in 1910, when it was thought his death from tuberculosis was imminent. He went to St. Mary’s Sanitarium in Boerne and learned of the growing Catholic congregation in Kerrville. He would spend the rest of his life building what would become Notre Dame Catholic Parish and School into a large and giving community with many people devoted to Christian service. After acquiring eight adjoining lots and two houses, Father Kemper applied to the archdiocese in San Antonio for the construction of a school serving first through twelfth grades. An advertisement stated that tuition would be “one dollar a month and free to the poor.” Twenty-seven pupils and three nuns from the sisters of charity of incarnate word, Sisters Cresentia, Dymphna and Ita, opened the school on August 28, 1912. Enrollment tripled by the end of the year. Originally called St. Mary’s, the school was renamed to honor Father Kemper’s revered alma mater, Notre Dame University. The school served the community with night courses in music, languages and art. During World War I, the school taught stenography and bookkeeping to ladies who filled needed jobs on the home front. In order to remain open during the great depression, the school downsized to eight grades and the night school was closed. When Father Kemper died in 1957, the front page headline of the Kerrville daily times proclaimed “death takes hill country benefactor.” For more than a century, Notre Dame Catholic School has trained up young people and served its community.
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
When Father Henry Kemper—ordained in 1910 amid expectations of an early death from tuberculosis—learned of Kerrville's growing Catholic congregation, he devoted the rest of his life to it. In 1912 he opened a school with 27 pupils and three Sisters of Charity, charging a dollar a month and nothing to the poor; enrollment tripled within the year. Renamed for Kemper's alma mater, Notre Dame, the school taught home-front skills during World War I, downsized to survive the Depression, and has served the community for more than a century.
Why it matters
It reflects the enormous role Catholic parishes and teaching sisters played in bringing education to small American towns, adapting through war and depression to endure.
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Related people
- · Father Henry Kemper
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
Notre Dame Catholic Church
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Founded in 1892 as the mission of St. Mary of the Assumption, this Kerrville congregation became a full parish in 1911 and soon added a school under Father Henry Michael Kemper. In 1915 it sponsored Our Lady of Guadalupe Church and School to serve Hispanic Catholics, a companion congregation that merged back into the parish in 1955, and the church took its present name, Notre Dame, when a new building rose in 1935. Over the decades its members extended outreach through jail ministry, a food pantry, and a free medical clinic.
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