St. John's Lutheran Church Cemetery

Duane's take

Here's how the official marker tells it, and I'll do my best to honor every word. Out here on the Texas Panhandle, the land keeps its secrets in stone. And if you know where to look, a quiet cemetery can hold more history than a whole library shelf.

This one does. The early homesteaders who put down roots in Lipscomb County weren't quite what most folks picture when they think of Texas settlers. They were Russians of German descent.

Not a combination you hear every day, and the gravestones in this cemetery will say so plainly if you stop long enough to read them. Among those settlers were Jacob M. and Amalia Koch, members of St. John's Evangelical Lutheran Church.

That congregation was established by the German Russian settlers in 1914, and it became the kind of anchor a community ties itself to when the wind and the distance get to feeling like too much. Now, church needs land, and cemeteries need ground, and by 1916 the Koch family allowed their fellow church members to use this very land as a burial ground. That's a quiet kind of generosity, the sort that doesn't ask for a speech.

They would go on to deed that land to the church outright in 1950, making it permanent, making it official. But long before the deed was signed, the first burial had already taken place. January of 1916.

Baby Hildegard Schilling. The very first soul laid to rest in this ground. That's a weight the place carries, and it carries it without flinching.

Today, St. John's Lutheran Church Cemetery stands as a link, a living link, to the early settlers of Lipscomb County and to their German Russian heritage. The gravestones themselves chronicle that heritage, name by name, year by year.

Some stories are told loud. This one is told in stone, in a Panhandle wind, in a language that takes a little patience to read. But it's all there.

What the marker says

Early homesteaders in Lipscomb County were russians of German descent. These included Jacob M. And Amalia Koch, who were members of St. John's Evangelical Lutheran Church, established by the German Russian settlers in 1914. By 1916, the Koch family allowed church members to use this land as a burial ground; they deeded the land to the church in 1950. The first burial was that of baby Hildegard Schilling in January 1916. The cemetery today is a link to early Lipscomb County settlers and to their German Russian Heritage, as chronicled on the gravestones. Historic Texas Cemetery - 2005