Webster Presbyterian Church
Seabrook, Harris County, Texas
Marker Inscription
Growing out of a Union Sunday School established in 1892, Webster Presbyterian Church was organized by farmers who moved to Texas from the Midwest. Early members also included Japanese rice farmers. A small church building erected in 1896 was destroyed in the 1900 storm and was replaced by this structure. After the Manned Spacecraft Center was built nearby in the 1960s, a number of people associated with the space program, including astronauts, joined the congregation and worshiped in this building. Moved here in 1981, the structure is now a museum. (1989)
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
Grown from an 1892 Union Sunday School organized by Midwestern farmers—and including Japanese rice farmers among its early members—this congregation lost its first building to the catastrophic 1900 Galveston storm and rebuilt. When NASA's Manned Spacecraft Center rose nearby in the 1960s, space-program workers and even astronauts joined the pews, and the building is now preserved as a museum.
Why it matters
Few small churches span so much of the American story, from immigrant farm settlement and the deadliest U.S. natural disaster to the astronauts of the space age worshiping under its roof.
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Related events
- · 1900 Galveston hurricane
- · Founding of the Manned Spacecraft Center
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
Contributions to the Texas Rice Industry by Seito and Kiyoaki Saibara
Webster, TX
Seito Saibara, a former university president and the first Christian member of Japan's parliament, came to Texas in 1903 at the invitation of the Houston Chamber of Commerce to advise farmers on rice cultivation. His son Kiyoaki brought 300 pounds of superior Shinriki seed from Japan, and together they planted crops that supplied improved seed across Texas and Louisiana. Though the colony of Japanese families the Saibaras hoped to establish ultimately dissolved amid homesickness, the father and son spent decades advancing rice strains and techniques that strengthened a major Gulf Coast industry.
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