Church of the Ascension

Duane's take

The official marker tells this one, and I'm just the voice carryin' it down the road. Now, Montell, Texas. Eighteen ninety.

Picture a place where Episcopal rites had never once been held, not until Bishop W. P. Elliott arrived and changed that fact.

That was the beginning. Just the beginning. Because someone had already been working toward this moment.

A man named Richard Galbraith, ordained as Reverend, had made a journey that started not in Texas, not even close. He came from Ireland. Came in 1883.

And he set himself to building something lasting in this corner of Uvalde County. Now here is where it gets remarkable. The Church of the Ascension did not rise up on local money alone.

The donations came from friends throughout the world. Throughout the world. You let that land for a second.

A church going up in Montell, Texas, funded by hands and hearts reaching in from every direction on the globe. All that gathering, all that labor, all that faith from distant places, and it came together in time for one particular day. Christmas Day, eighteen ninety.

That is when the first service was held in the finished edifice. You could not have picked a more fitting morning if you tried. And the story was not quite done yet.

The following year, eighteen ninety-one, the Right Reverend J. S. Johnston, Bishop of West Texas, arrived to perform the Services of Consecration.

The building was complete. The rites had been said. Now it was officially, formally, and permanently consecrated.

A man from Ireland, donations from around the world, and a Christmas morning in Montell. That little church earned every stone of it.

What the marker says

Bishop W. P. Elliott held first Episcopal rites in Montell, 1890. Church was built with donations from friends throughout the world, under the leadership of the Rev. Richard Galbraith, who came from Ireland in 1883. The first service was held in this edifice Christmas Day, 1890. Services of Consecration by the Right Rev. J. S. Johnston, Bishop of West Texas, 1891. 1965