First Presbyterian Church, founded in 1839 just three years after the Battle of the Alamo, is the oldest continuously operating Protestant congregation in San Antonio. In 1839, San Antonio was a rough frontier town of about 1,500 people, most of them Tejano Catholics whose religious practice dated back more than a century to the Spanish missions. The arrival of a Presbyterian minister and the establishment of a Protestant congregation represented the advancing edge of Anglo-American cultural settlement — the same demographic wave that had driven the Texas Revolution three years earlier.
The early congregation met in whatever buildings were available: private homes, the old Spanish Governor's Palace, temporary structures erected after flood damage. The current church building, a dignified Classical Revival structure, was constructed in later decades as the congregation grew with the city. Throughout the nineteenth century, First Presbyterian served as an educational as well as religious institution — establishing one of the first schools for Anglo-American children in San Antonio.
The church also played a role in the German immigrant community's transition to English-language civic life. Nearly 190 years of Sunday mornings have been kept in this location — an unbroken chain of community that predates nearly every other institution in the city.