Religious Co,mmmities of J11en in Tezas
231
land, in 187r. It is dedicated primarily to the spiritual welfare of our Colored brethren. The American branch became independent in 1893, with ·its headquarters at Baltimore, Maryland. The Society, in spite of great difficulties and trials, has grown and developed to meet a great need in the United States, where too long, the Colored have been locally neglected or ignored too often in our missionary endeavors. Today it numbers over 207 priests serving over 100,000 negroes in about 90 missions in the deep South. It conducts a major seminary in Washington, D. C., and a minor seminary and novitiate at Newberg, New York. The Josephite Fathers were formally invited to come to Texas and work among the Colored in October, 1901. The Most Reverend Nicholas A. Gallagher, Bishop of Galveston, asked them to come and take care of the recently established parish of St. Nicholas in Houston. Although the fonner beginnings of this Colored parish go back to 1887, in reality its dates from 1896, the year when it was placed under Father Thomas Hennessy of Annunciation Church in Houston, who looked parishoners of St. Nicholas until the Josephites took over in 1901. 49 Interest in missionary work among the Colored found further expres- sion in the Diocese of Galveston about the same time that St. Nicholas was started in Houston. Bishop Gallagher, good shepherd of his flock, felt a deep interest in this neglected segment of the faithful. As early as 1886, he had induced the Dominican Sisters to open a school for Colored children in what was destined to become Holy Rosary Parish. Accordingly, a small school for about fifty children was opened at the east end of the city, with the cooperation of Mother Agnes, of blessed memory. The need for such a school, the first of its kind in Texas, was so great that the accommodations shortly proved inadequate. Bishop Gallagher then erected a new building in 1888, with four classrooms, each large enough for fifty pupils. Here was established the new parish of the Holy Rosary, "the first church built in Texas for the exclusive use of Catholic Negroes and the first school established for Catholic Negro children in the State." This is not, however, the only distinction of Holy Rosary Parish. Although it began as a mission of St. Mary's Cathedral of Galveston, its first pastor was the Most Reverend Bishop Gallagher himself. 50 On December 29, 1889, Father Phillip L. Keller, who had come from Germany as a young seminarian driven by his desire to work among the
49 Diocese of Galveston, Cenlennial, 18.47-1947, p. 75. SO/bid., 44.
Powered by FlippingBook