DUANE
Get the App
Duane's take
The way I tell it, I'm followin' the official marker for St. Mary's Catholic Church in Windthorst, Archer County, and this one starts with a whole lot of Texas prairie and a plan. In 1891, German-American Catholics obtained seventy-five thousand acres of Archer County land for a farm colony.
Seventy-five thousand acres. Before they drove a single nail or cleared a single field, they planted a cross. Right there on the open land.
Then they laid off the town of Windthorst around a twenty-acre site set aside for a church, a school, and a rectory. They knew before the town existed what the town was going to be built around. A man named Ernest Hoff built the first structure in town, and it was a home.
So the colony had its cross, it had its plan, and now it had its first roof. Then came New Year's Day, 1892. January the first.
Father Joseph F. Reisdorf celebrated the first Mass in Windthorst, right there in that home Ernest Hoff had built, before ten parishioners. Ten people.
That was the congregation. The whole thing. But they didn't wait long to build something worthy of what they'd started.
The first church was dedicated in 1893. A second followed in 1904. And the third, the one standing today as St.
Mary's, was completed in 1925. Three churches for one parish. Along the way, two members of that parish have become priests.
You plant a cross before you even lay out the streets of a town, maybe that's the kind of community you get. St. Mary's Church, the marker tells us, continues to be the center of community life in Windthorst.
Ten parishioners on a January morning in 1892. Seems like the cross they planted took root just fine.
What the marker says
Obtaining 75,000 acres of Archer County land for a farm colony in 1891, German-American Catholics planted cross here and laid off Windthorst around a 20-acre site for church, school, and rectory. Ernest Hoff built town's first structure, a home. There on Jan. 1, 1892, Father Joseph F. Reisdorf celebrated the first Mass in Windthorst, before 10 parishioners. The first church was dedicated in 1893, second in 1904. The present one, third for the parish, was completed in 1925. Two members of parish have become priests. St. Mary's Church continues to be the center of community life. (1974)