Saints Cyril and Methodius Catholic Church
Shiner, Lavaca County, Texas
Marker Inscription
Early German and Czech settlers in this area of Lavaca County attended Catholic worship services in private homes or at churches in Hallettsville or Moulton until 1890, when a new mission was established in Shiner by the Rev. John Anthony Forest. The new congregation was named for 9th-century Greek Missionaries Cyril and Methodius, who converted Slovakian-Moravian central Europeans to Christianity. The members acquired two acres of land at this site in 1891, and a frame sanctuary was completed in May of that year. In February 1892 a tornado caused extensive damage to the original church structure, but it was rebuilt on a larger scale. Designated a parish in 1912, the growing congregation soon needed larger facilities. This structure, designed by F. Wahrenburger, was built in 1920-21 by volunteer laborers led by the Rev. F. X. Wolf. An outstanding example of the Romanesque revival style of architecture, it features stained glass windows imported from Munich, Germany; cut stone detailing in the pinnacles and buttresses; an arcaded front portico; and a soaring, square tower with octagonal spire. Listed in the National Register of Historic places since 1983, it also features a magnificent painted interior. Recorded Texas Historic Landmark - 1990
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
German and Czech settlers in this part of Lavaca County worshiped in private homes and neighboring towns until 1890, when Rev. John Anthony Forest established a mission at Shiner named for the ninth-century Greek missionaries Cyril and Methodius. An 1891 frame sanctuary was wrecked by a tornado and rebuilt larger, and in 1920–21 volunteer laborers raised the present Romanesque Revival church, with stained glass imported from Munich, cut-stone buttresses, and a soaring spired tower.
Why it matters
The church stands as a monument to the German and Czech Catholic immigrants who shaped south-central Texas, naming their parish for the very saints who first brought Christianity to their Slavic ancestors.
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Related people
- · John Anthony Forest
- · F. Wahrenburger
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
Saint Ludmila's Academy
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Shiner's first Catholic school opened in early 1897 in a two-story French-style frame building, named Saint Ludmila's Academy for a Slavic saint and run by the Sisters of the Incarnate Word and Blessed Sacrament. It served fifty-seven students that first year in a community of German and Czech immigrants, teaching those languages alongside piano, guitar, and mandolin. Over the following decades it grew from an elementary academy into a four-year high school and, eventually, the modern Shiner Catholic School.
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Barbed wire, the railroad, and German and Czech immigrants hungry for small family farms combined to make cotton king in Lavaca County. From August Stephan's first gin in 1892 through the founding of the Shiner Oil Mill in 1896, ginning, cottonseed-oil processing, and rail export drove Shiner's economy for nearly eighty years. The industry peaked in the 1920s with eight gins inside the city limits—four of them on this very site—before the last bale was ginned in 1971.
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