St. Paul's Episcopal Church
Marfa, Presidio County, Texas
Marker Inscription
English natives John and Mary (Walker) Humphris came to Texas in the early 1870s and arrived in Marfa in 1883. John, his brother-in-law, James Walker, and partner Charles Murphy founded Humphris and Co., which became the largest mercantile between El Paso and San Antonio. Mary, a devout Episcopalian, organized the Union Protestant Sunday School, which met in the Humphris home with Mary teaching from the Bible and the Anglican Book of Common Prayer. John built an adobe church near their home to serve as a Union Protestant Church serving many denominations. The building on West Dallas Street became the San Pablo Mexican Methodist mission In 1897, Bishop John Mills Kendrick gave permission to Marfa Episcopalians to build a separate church named St Paul's. Elizabeth Livesay donated lots on Highland Avenue and John and Mary Humphris paid for the building. The church was established as a mission of the Cathedral Church of St. John's in Albuquerque. In November 1928, the Chamber of Commerce hotel committee purchased the St. Paul's lot, and the Paisano Hotel was built on that site. In March 1929, Bishop Frederick B. Howden bought lots facing the Courthouse square from W.A. and Maudie Hord for a new church. Architect and engineer R. H. Mull drew initial plans, which were finlized by the El Paso architectural firm of Braunton and McGhee, who followed Mull's plans but designed a larger parish hall and an apartment for a resident priest. The Gothic Revival style church, completed in 1930, is built with hollow clay tile walls and river rock masonry exterior facing. Prominent features include lancet windows, and entry faced with a white stone surround, and a tall steeple. The oldest Protestant church in the the Big Bend region, St. Paul's continues to serve as a spiritual beacon and a center for community activities. Recorded Texas Historic Landmark - 2015
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
St. Paul's traces its roots to English immigrants John and Mary Humphris, who reached Marfa in 1883 and grew the largest mercantile between El Paso and San Antonio. Mary, a devout Episcopalian, gathered worshippers in her home, and the couple financed an adobe church that served many denominations before Marfa's Episcopalians won permission to form their own mission in 1897. The present Gothic Revival church of hollow clay tile and river rock, completed in 1930, stands as the oldest Protestant congregation in the Big Bend.
Why it matters
The church shows how immigrant merchants and their faith anchored community life in an isolated frontier railroad town, leaving a landmark that still centers Marfa.
The story behind this marker
AI contextThe era
Marfa was born of the railroad. Like many towns strung across the far West Texas plateau in the late nineteenth century, it began as a stop on the line and grew into a supply and shipping point for the surrounding ranch country. The land was high, dry, and beautiful, but it was also isolated — a long way from the older cities of Texas, with the nearest large towns hundreds of miles apart.
In a place like that, the institutions that make a community — stores, schools, and churches — had to be built from scratch by the people who arrived, and often at their own expense. The merchant who could keep shelves stocked across vast distances became a pillar of the town, and the church that gathered its scattered faithful gave the raw settlement a center of gravity beyond commerce.
This was also an era of immigration into the American West, and not only from across the southern border. Newcomers from Europe brought their trades, their capital, and their faith traditions, and left their mark on the small towns they helped establish. St. Paul's grew directly out of that convergence of railroad-era commerce and immigrant devotion.
People & events
The congregation traces its roots to John and Mary (Walker) Humphris, English natives who came to Texas in the early 1870s and reached Marfa in 1883. John, with his brother-in-law James Walker and partner Charles Murphy, founded Humphris and Co., which grew into the largest mercantile between El Paso and San Antonio — an extraordinary reach for a store in so remote a town, and a sign of just how central it was to the whole region's supply.
Mary, a devout Episcopalian, gathered the town's faithful before there was any church to hold them. She organized a Union Protestant Sunday School that met in the Humphris home, teaching from the Bible and the Anglican Book of Common Prayer. John then built an adobe church near their home to serve worshippers of many denominations — a shared house of worship in a place too small and too new to support separate ones. That building later became a Mexican Methodist mission.
In 1897, with a bishop's permission, Marfa's Episcopalians were allowed to form their own church, named St. Paul's; Elizabeth Livesay donated lots and the Humphrises paid for the building. Decades later the story turned again: in 1928 the original lot was bought for the site of the Paisano Hotel, and a new church rose facing the courthouse square. Completed in 1930 in the Gothic Revival style — hollow clay tile walls with a river-rock exterior, lancet windows, a stone entry surround, and a tall steeple — it stands as the oldest Protestant congregation in the Big Bend.
Its place in the American story
St. Paul's is a case study in how community took hold on the American frontier. Again and again across the West, it was merchants and their families — people with means, mobility, and a stake in the town's permanence — who underwrote the first churches, schools, and civic institutions. The Humphris store and the Humphris church are two faces of the same impulse: to turn a railroad stop into a real and lasting town.
The congregation's ecumenical beginnings are quietly remarkable, too. A single adobe building serving many denominations, and then passing on to serve another community entirely, reflects the practical, share-what-we-have faith of small frontier settlements, where believers of different traditions often worshipped together simply because there was only one roof.
And the church embodies the immigrant thread in the western story. Two English newcomers helped build the commercial and spiritual anchors of a far Texas town, planting Old World forms — an Anglican prayer book, a Gothic Revival sanctuary — in the high desert. The result is a landmark that ties this remote place to the broadest currents of American settlement.
If you visit
Marfa has become a magnet for travelers drawn to its art scene and its startling high-desert light, but St. Paul's rewards anyone curious about the town's deeper roots. Look for the hallmarks the marker describes: the river-rock masonry facing, the pointed lancet windows, the pale stone surround at the entry, and the steeple rising near the courthouse square. Gothic Revival architecture was meant to lift the eye and the spirit upward, and even in miniature it does.
Notice the materials, because they tell a local story. Hollow clay tile and river rock are the honest, available substances of West Texas building — a frontier congregation reaching for a soaring European style with the stone and earth actually at hand.
The church sits within easy walking distance of Marfa's other landmarks, including the historic Paisano Hotel that occupies the congregation's earlier site — a neat bit of layered history you can trace on foot. Set against the town's famous light and big sky, St. Paul's makes a quiet, grounding stop on any Big Bend or West Texas itinerary.
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 Humphris
- · Mary Walker Humphris
Themes & tags
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