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How Fort Concho’s Chaplains Helped Build San Angelo’s Early Civic Life
Summary
A lecture recounted how 19th-century Army chaplains at Fort Concho — notably Norman Badger, George W. Dunbar and Francis Heyer Weaver — served as teachers, librarians, gardeners and ministers, seeding churches, schools and civic institutions in what became San Angelo.
Unidentified Speaker, editor of the West Texas Historical Association newsletter, described how Army chaplains stationed at Fort Concho in the late 19th century served far beyond religious duties and helped shape the nascent community that became San Angelo.
The speaker said Chaplain Norman Badger, assigned to Fort Concho in March 1871 and arriving on April 9, 1871, crossed the North Concho River to conduct worship in the small settlement that would grow into San Angelo. According to a monthly report by the post surgeon recorded in contemporary documents, that outreach “was probably the first time that the name of the deity was ever publicly used in reverence in that place,” an early sign of religious life taking root beyond the post.
Badger and his successors carried out an array of civic tasks that the speaker summarized plainly: “the chaplains served diligently as pastor,…
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