St. Thomas Episcopal Church
Rockdale, Milam County, Texas
Marker Inscription
Earliest Episcopal services in Rockdale were held in 1875 in a store, where other faiths also worshiped. On Dec. 19, 1876, Bishop Alexander Gregg organized St. Thomas Mission, and in 1879 this site was bought with funds given by the Solon Joynes family. A frame chapel-- preserved as nave, chancel, and sanctuary in the present edifice-- was built in 1880. The Rev. Joseph Carden, 1920-24 rector, made and adorned the altar with original carvings. To accommodate the growing parish, the church was enlarged and a parish hall added in 1952.
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
Rockdale's first Episcopal services were held in a store in 1875, shared with other faiths, before Bishop Alexander Gregg organized St. Thomas Mission in 1876. The congregation bought this site in 1879 with a gift from the Solon Joynes family and raised a frame chapel in 1880, still preserved within the later church. A 1920s rector hand-carved the altar, and the growing parish added a hall and expanded the building in 1952.
Why it matters
Small-town churches like St. Thomas trace the spread of organized religion across the Texas frontier and the way early congregations grew from borrowed rooms into lasting institutions.
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Related people
- · Bishop Alexander Gregg
- · Rev. Joseph Carden
- · Solon Joynes
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
First Baptist Church of Rockdale
Rockdale, TX
Rockdale grew up around a railroad camp in 1873, and the following year the Rev. B. B. Baxter gathered 18 charter members into a Baptist congregation that first met in a room above a dry-goods store. A simple sanctuary went up in 1881, replaced by a new building in 1919 as the church grew with the town. A Latin American mission begun in the 1950s later became its own Southern Baptist congregation.
Jewish Cemetery
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When the railroad reached Rockdale in 1874, Jewish merchants were among its earliest residents, including the Lowenstein brothers, who sold goods from a tent before the tracks even arrived. By 1879 some 100 Jewish residents supported an active B'nai B'rith lodge, and in 1877 the Hebrew Benevolent Association established this dedicated burial ground. Its graves—among them a Confederate veteran and victims of an 1888 hotel fire—chronicle a community whose last burial came in 1939.
Murray Cemetery
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First known as Pleasant Grove Cemetery, this Milam County burial ground shared its site with the community's school and church, its earliest marked grave dating to 1856. It took its lasting name from Madison Murray, a Civil War veteran who moved from Mississippi in the late 1860s, became a community leader, and ran the old schoolhouse as a private academy. As settlements rose and faded, the cemetery went on serving the Pleasant Grove, Bushdale, and Bethlehem communities, cared for by an association organized in 2004.
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