Church of the Redeemer

Duane's take

Here's how the official marker for the Church of the Redeemer tells it, and I'm gonna do my best to give it its due. Now, if you want to talk about a congregation that had to earn every inch of its existence, pull up a chair, because this one starts not with a church at all, but with chaplains. Fort Duncan chaplains, to be exact, holding Episcopal services out there in Eagle Pass in the 1850s.

No dedicated building, no permanent priest. Just the frontier, and a few men of the cloth doing what they could. Decades pass.

Then the Rt. Rev. R.

W. B. Elliott arrives on the scene.

He's the first bishop of the Missionary District of West Texas, and he has got a vision for a proper house of worship in Eagle Pass. But vision, as any Texan can tell you, requires funding. So here's where the story takes a turn worth savoring.

The Eagle Pass Ladies Aid Society puts up five hundred dollars. Five hundred dollars, contributed by the women of that town, and that money is what gets the planning rolling on this very edifice in 1886 and 1887. A contract goes to William G.

Hausser. Total cost: three thousand, one hundred and fifty dollars. The structure they built was Gothic revival, and by all accounts it was apparently completed in late 1887.

Then comes the Reverend A. H. Noll, the first resident priest to actually live there and serve that congregation.

He initiates services in February of 1888. The building is standing, the pews are filling, and things are moving. But a building isn't a consecrated church until it's consecrated, and that moment comes with a certain ceremony.

Bishop James Steptoe Johnston consecrates the Church of the Redeemer on Ascension Day, May 15, 1890, during a meeting of the district convocation. That is a day with some weight to it. For a while, the congregation carries on as a mission.

Then on January 14, 1895, the parish of the Church of the Redeemer is formally organized, with sixteen members on the rolls. Sixteen. Small by any measure, but they are official.

And then there are the people who passed through those doors on their way to larger stages. The Reverend J. D.

Worrell, Jr., was ordained to the deaconate right here. The Reverend R. E.

Dicus and the Reverend E. L. Browning both served as rectors here, and both of them went on to become bishops.

Something about this little Gothic revival church in Eagle Pass, it seems, had a way of shaping men who were going places. And let's not leave out the Cunning Workers Club. A ladies organization, active from 1902 to 1953, and they donated many of the furnishings inside that church, and a number of those stained glass windows you can still see today.

Fort Duncan chaplains, five hundred dollars from determined women, one Gothic revival building, sixteen founding members, and a congregation that kept producing bishops. That is the Church of the Redeemer, Eagle Pass, Maverick County. The marker says recorded Texas Historic Landmark, 1978.

The walls were already speaking long before anyone put that on paper.

What the marker says

Chaplains at Fort Duncan held the earliest Episcopal services in Eagle Pass in the 1850s. The Rt. Rev. R. W. B. Elliott, first bishop of the Missionary District of West Texas, with $500 contributed by the Eagle Pass Ladies Aid Society, led in planning the construction of this edifice in 1886-87. William G. Hausser was awarded a contract for the construction at a cost of $3,150. The Gothic revival structure was apparently completed in late 1887. The Rev. A. H. Noll, the first resident priest, initiated services here in February 1888. Bishop James Steptoe Johnston consecrated the church building on Ascension Day, May 15, 1890, during a meeting of the district convocation. The church continued as a mission until January 14, 1895, when the parish of the Church of the Redeemer, with sixteen members, was organized. The Rev. J. D. Worrell, Jr., was ordained to the deaconate and the Rev. R. E. Dicus and the Rev. E. L. Browning, who served as rectors here, later became bishops. The Cunning Workers Club, a ladies organization which functioned from 1902 to 1953, donated many of the furnishings and a number of the stained glass windows. Recorded Texas Historic Landmark - 1978