St. John Catholic Church (of Bomarton)

Duane's take

Here's how the official marker tells it, and here's how I'm telling it to you. Out on the rolling plains of Baylor County, near a little place called Bomarton, a congregation took root the way so many things take root in Texas: quietly, stubbornly, and with a whole lot of neighbors pitching in. The year was 1908, and St.

John Catholic Church was established, though at that point the church had no walls to call its own. Services and Masses were held wherever there was room, sometimes in the Mary's Creek Schoolhouse, sometimes in the home of a man named Matt Marak. You make do with what you have, and what they had was faith and a willingness to show up.

Now, that couldn't last forever, and it didn't. Come 1909, the first church edifice went up, and it went up because four men put their names on it as trustees: John Cocek, Matt Marak, Leopold Skrehot, and Alois Sykora. Four names worth remembering, because without them there's no building, and without the building there's not much of a story.

Then in 1910, Father Paul Mosler was installed as the first pastor, and St. John Catholic Church had itself a shepherd to go along with its flock. The congregation worshipped in that first edifice for years, through dry summers and cold winters and all the ordinary hardships a West Texas parish knows.

And then, in 1936, they built a brick church. After everything that came before, that brick church wasn't just a building. It was a statement.

This community had arrived, and it intended to stay.

What the marker says

Established in 1908, when services and Masses were held in Mary's Creek Schoolhouse or in home of Matt Marak. First Church edifice was built 1909, with John Cocek, Marak, Leopold Skrehot, and Alois Sykora, trustees. Father Paul Mosler was installed as first pastor in 1910. Brick church was built in 1936. (1970)