Praha: The Mother Parish of Czech Texas

The first Czech Catholics in Texas regard St. Mary's Church in Praha as their mother parish. Czech families began arriving in Fayette County in the eighteen fifties, building a community they named after the capital of their homeland.

The original St. Mary's dates to eighteen sixty-five. The present church of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary, built in the eighteen nineties, rises with a hundred-and-thirty-foot steeple above the rolling farmland and contains interior frescoes painted by Godfrey Flury.

Every August fifteenth since eighteen fifty-five the community has gathered here for the Feast of the Assumption, drawing more than five thousand visitors today. Praha is now an unincorporated community of a few dozen people, but on that August feast day, for one afternoon, it briefly becomes one of the most crowded crossroads in Fayette County.