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 Martin County, in a stretch of West Texas that in 1881 felt like it sat at the edge of the known world — everything west of Fort Worth and east of El Paso was a whole lot of nothing much — a group of Carmelite Monks arrived with something bold in mind. Not just a church.
A monastery. A German Catholic colony. A foothold of faith planted right in the middle of that wide, windswept emptiness.
And so they built the first Catholic church between Fort Worth and El Paso. Let that sink in for a moment. That's a long stretch of lonesome country to be the first anything.
They didn't stop at a modest chapel either. By 1884, an adobe and brick monastery stood completed, and by 1885, St. Joseph's Church itself was done.
Out here. In this. Stone and adobe rising out of the caliche like a declaration.
Then came the Sisters of Divine Providence, who opened a school in 1887. Short-lived, the marker says, and it doesn't dress that up. But the story wasn't over.
In 1894, the Sisters of Mercy came back and reopened the school. And then in 1897, the Carmelite Monks — those original founders, the ones who'd hauled this whole dream out to Martin County — disbanded. Sold the property to the Sisters of Mercy.
The sisters kept it going, running a convent and academy through the years, tending what those monks had built. Until June 11, 1938. A tornado.
After that, abandonment. What the storm left behind and what time has since claimed leaves only a dormitory, ruins of other buildings, and the cemetery. The grand monastery, the church, the academy — gone or crumbling.
But the cemetery remains, and somewhere in it lie the ambitions of 1881, the labor of 1884, and the faith that outlasted everything except the wind.
What the marker says
With the purpose of founding a monastery and a German Catholic colony, Carmelite Monks, in 1881, began the first Catholic church between Fort Worth and El Paso. The adobe and brick monastery was completed in 1884, and St. Joseph's Church in 1885. Sisters of Divine Providence opened a short-lived school, 1887; reopened, 1894, by Sisters of Mercy. In 1897, Carmelite Monks disbanded and sold property to Sisters of Mercy, who operated a convent and academy until abandonment after tornado of June 11, 1938. All that remains are a dormitory, ruins of other buildings, and the cemetery. (1973)