Christ Church Cathedral, the cathedral church for the Episcopal Diocese of Texas, rises in front of you. This congregation was established in 1839, when Texas still stood as an independent republic, and it remains the oldest extant congregation in Houston and one of the oldest non-Roman Catholic churches in Texas. Listen for the echoes of early worship: before any churches were built here, the Texas government permitted church meetings in the Capitol Building, and the first known Episcopal clergy to preach in Houston was Reverend Richard Salmon, who arrived in Texas in 1836 and first visited Houston in 1838.
Christ Church itself was founded on March 16, 1839, the first chartered congregation in the city. Its principal founder, William Fairfax Gray, came from Fredericksburg, Virginia; he had been a vestryman of St. George’s Church, passed the bar in Virginia in 1835, traveled to Texas, worked as a land agent, and helped organize the interim Texas Revolutionary government before arriving in Houston by 1837. The reach of this congregation spread outward: many Episcopal churches in Houston and the surrounding area began as missions of Christ Church, including Trinity Church, founded in 1893.
Many Episcopal churches across Houston began as missions of this cathedral, Trinity Church among them, founded in 1893.