Site of Saint Dominic Catholic Church and Cemetery

Duane's take

Here's how the official marker tells it, and here's how I'm passing it along to you. Way out in Medina County, there's a patch of ground that holds more than a century of memory, and it all starts with a ship, a dream, and a colony carved out of the Texas frontier. The year was 1847.

Settlers from Alsace, France, came to found D'Hanis Colony, and before they'd hardly caught their breath, they formed a congregation. That was the beginning of Saint Dominic Catholic Church. Now, 1847 was also the year they buried a child, a child of the colonists, and so the cemetery began the same year as the congregation.

A community planting roots and mourning loss in the same season. You sit with that for a moment. By 1853, the town had grown enough to become a mission parish, and the congregation built a limestone church.

The timber for that church didn't just appear. It was hauled by ox-wagon from the Medina River. Think about what that means, every beam, every plank, earned by slow and stubborn miles.

Then came 1868, and with it the first resident pastor, and the congregation marked the occasion by building a sandstone extension onto that original limestone church. Stone on stone, the place kept growing. The cemetery kept growing too, all the way through to 1893, when a diphtheria epidemic swept through and the community started a new cemetery to follow.

That's the kind of sentence that lands heavy, and it should. Then the twentieth century arrived, and the old church, that limestone and sandstone landmark, was abandoned after 1914, when a new church was built in what folks called "New" D'Hanis, a mile and a half to the west. The congregation moved on.

The building did not. And so today, the site of Saint Dominic Catholic Church and its cemetery still stand as what they always were: the place where a colony from Alsace, France, first gathered to worship and first gathered to grieve, in the very same year, in 1847.

What the marker says

Congregation formed in 1847 with founding of D'Hanis Colony by settlers from Alsace, France. In 1853, when town became a mission parish, limestone church was built, using timber hauled by ox-wagon from Medina River. Sandstone extension was built in 1868 upon arrival of first resident pastor but abandoned after 1914 when new church was built in "New" D'Hanis (1 1/2 miles west). Cemetery, dating from burial of child of colonists in 1847, was used until 1893, when new cemetery was started following diptheria epidemic. (1972)