DUANE
Duane's take
Here's how the official marker tells it, and I'll do my best to do it justice. Way out in Karnes County, in the town of Kenedy, there's a little church with a story that starts before it even had a name. Episcopal worship services were being held there as early as 1899 — no formal congregation, no official mission, just folks gathering in faith.
That went on for a good while, quiet and steady, until 1913, when the Reverend Alfred R. S. Garden came along and organized things proper, establishing the congregation of Saint Matthew's as a mission.
Then came the building itself. Frank Corby designed it, and when it was completed in 1916, it was the only Episcopal church in the entire county. Now that's something.
Corby didn't go plain about it, either. He gave it the full Gothic Revival treatment — a Latin cross plan, tall narrow windows with pointed arches reaching upward like they've got somewhere to be, fabricated buttresses hugging the walls, and a side entry bay narthex to welcome you in out of the Texas heat. It had a crenelated tower, too, the kind with the notched battlements that make a church look like it could hold off an army if it needed to.
Then 1942 rolled around, and a hurricane had its say. The tower took damage, and when the rebuilding was done, that crenelated top was replaced with a gabled roof. The church stood its ground, changed just enough to carry the memory of that storm right there in its roofline.
One church, one county, and a whole lot of years of showing up — that's Saint Matthew's Episcopal Church in Kenedy, Texas.
What the marker says
Episcopal worship services were held in Kenedy as early as 1899, though the congregation of St. Matthew's was not organized as a mission until 1913, by the Rev. Alfred R. S. Garden. Designed by Frank Corby, this was the only Episcopal church in the county when completed in 1916. The Gothic Revival style structure, in a Latin cross plan, features tall, narrow, pointed-arch windows, fabricated buttresses, and a side entry bay narthex. A crenelated tower was rebuilt with a gabled roof following damage in a 1942 hurricane. Recorded Texas Historic Landmark -1986