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This history was drawn by Lewis F. Fisher from his book Saint Mark’s Episcopal Church: 150 Years of Ministry in Downtown San Antonio, 1858–2008 (Maverick Publishing, 2008). The book is available by CLICKING HERE or through your favorite bookstore.

Getting Established, 1858–1910
The end of the Mexican War in 1848 opened the floodgates of growth and prosperity in the new state of Texas. San Antonio, on the western edge of the frontier, was particularly awash in new development. Waves of immigrants from the rest of the United States and from Europe sent the old Spanish town’s population soaring beyond 8,000.

Episcopal Missionary Bishop George Washington Freeman made his first visit to San Antonio in 1848. In 1850 a congregation of a dozen Episcopalians was admitted to the Diocese of Texas as Trinity Church, served part time by an Episcopalian U.S. Army chaplain, John F. Fish, and then, for two years, by a fulltime rector, Charles Rottenstein. Trinity Church, however, was unable to complete its own building, membership dwindled, Rottenstein was not replaced and in 1858 Trinity was ruled to have disbanded.

On Easter Sunday 1858, Lucius D. Jones, an Episcopal missionary based at St. Andrew’s Church in nearby Seguin, held services for Episcopalians in San Antonio. Worshippers elected a vestry and were admitted to the Diocese of Texas a few weeks later as St. Mark’s Church, with forty members. Jones moved to San Antonio as rector. The nation’s leading church architect, Richard Upjohn, designer of Trinity Church at the head of Wall Street in New York, was hired to design a building for St. Mark’s, one of his few commissions west of the Mississippi. But even as civilian members were aided by Episcopalians stationed in San Antonio as U.S. Army officers—most prominent among them Robert E. Lee, in 1860 a lieutenant colonel in temporary command of the Department of Texas—sufficient funds could not be raised to complete the building before the Civil War broke out. Services had to continue being held in rented rooms. 

Work on Upjohn’s unfinished church did not resume until after the arrival in 1868 of the fifth rector, Walter Raleigh Richardson, 31. As the region recovered from the war, construction resumed in 1873 and the Gothic-style limestone block building was completed and dedicated on Easter Sunday 1875. The church bell was cast from a bronze cannon found buried near the Alamo on the grounds of the home of founding members Samuel and Mary A. Maverick. Remaining debt was paid and the church was consecrated on St. Mark’s Day 1881. In 1875 St. Mark’s had been named the cathedral church of the new Missionary District of Western Texas—since 1904, the Diocese of West Texas—with Richardson as dean. The cathedral designation ended, amicably, in 1888 over administrative policy differences. Walter Richardson became a beloved rector as the church grew during his thirty-eight year tenure, which ended with his retirement in 1908. He was followed by J. Lindsay Patton.