St. Mary’s Catholic Church

101 W Church Street

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St. Mary’s Catholic Church has a history as old as Victoria itself. The current building was completed and dedicated in 1904. With the exception of existing mission churches and, possibly, San Fernando in San Antonio, the congregation is the oldest in the state.

 

Don Martin De León arrived in the area in the fall of 1824 along with forty-one Mexican families. This group settled what was a colonial grant and is known today as Victoria. The site of the original church, “The Chapel of The Empresario", located where the Federal Post Office and Court House are today, was completed in 1826 to fulfill a condition of his empresario contract in providing a church for the colonists. That structure, Nuestra Senora de Guadalupe, marked the beginning of St. Mary’s congregation.

 

In 1856, construction of a new brick church was begun on land donated by Doña Patricia De León. This building stood at the corner of Church and Bridge streets until 1886 when a hurricane blew most of the roof off the building. A site was chosen for a new building to house what came to be known as St. Mary’s Catholic Church and the present building was started in 1902.

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Additional information on St. Mary’s can be found in Historic Homes of Victoria, Volume I, which is available at the Victoria Preservation Inc office or here, online, in our SHOP.