Kiowa Cemetery
Booker, Lipscomb County, Texas
Marker Inscription
Named for the nearby creek, Kiowa Cemetery served the residents who settled here in the early 20th century. The community consisted of Russians of German descent whose families began settling in Russia in the mid-1700s, during the rule of Catherine the Great. In 1910, several of these German-Russian families settled on the Kiowa Creek south of Booker; they soon established a Lutheran church. Charter members of the church included the Meller, Bechthold, and Littau families; all are represented in this burial ground. The first internment, of Abraham Littau, occurred in 1912. In 1916, Leonhard and Katherine Littau donated property for use as a cemetery. Today, descendents of the interred care for this burial ground. Historic Texas Cemetery - 2007
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
Kiowa Cemetery holds a community of German-Russians—descendants of Germans who had settled the Russian steppe under Catherine the Great in the mid-1700s. Around 1910 several of these families settled along Kiowa Creek south of Booker, where they soon built a Lutheran church, and the burial ground took its first grave, Abraham Littau, in 1912. In 1916 the Littau family deeded the land for a cemetery still tended by the descendants of those buried there.
Why it matters
The cemetery marks one leg of a remarkable double migration—from Germany to Russia and then to the American plains—that carried German-Russian farmers into the Texas Panhandle.
The story behind this marker
AI contextThe era
To stand at Kiowa Cemetery is to stand at the end of one of the most remarkable migrations in modern history — one that took two centuries and crossed two continents to arrive on the Texas high plains. The families buried here were German by ancestry, but their story runs through Russia before it reaches America.
In the mid-1700s, during the reign of Catherine the Great, thousands of Germans accepted the Russian crown's invitation to settle the vast steppe, drawn by promises of land and the freedom to keep their language, their faith, and their farming ways. For generations they lived as Germans within Russia — a people apart, tending grain on the open plains and holding tightly to their Lutheran and communal traditions.
By the early twentieth century, those same qualities that had made them valued colonists were fading under changing Russian policy, and many looked again across an ocean for land and liberty. The American Great Plains — flat, fertile, and hungry for experienced dryland farmers — must have looked strikingly like the steppe they knew. Around 1910 several of these German-Russian families settled along Kiowa Creek, just south of Booker, and set about doing what their forebears had done in Russia: breaking new ground and building a church.
People & events
The cemetery takes its name from the nearby creek, but its soul belongs to the families who chose this spot. When they arrived around 1910, one of the first things they did was establish a Lutheran church — the same anchor of faith and community their ancestors had carried from Germany into Russia generations before. Among the charter members were the Meller, Bechthold, and Littau families, and all three are represented in the ground here.
The first burial came quickly, as it so often did in new settlements. Abraham Littau was laid to rest here in 1912, only about two years after the families put down roots — the first grave in what would become the community's permanent resting place.
In 1916, Leonhard and Katherine Littau formally donated the property for use as a cemetery, giving the community a lasting home for its dead. That act of gift-giving bound the family's name to the land in a way that endures: today the burial ground is cared for by the descendants of the very people interred here, an unbroken thread of stewardship passing down through the generations that remained.
Its place in the American story
The German-Russians who rest here belong to one of the great overlooked chapters of American settlement. When they and others like them poured onto the Great Plains in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, they brought precisely the skills the region demanded: generations of hard-won experience farming dry, treeless, wind-swept grassland. They had, in effect, already practiced on the Russian steppe for the American plains.
Their arrival helped turn the Great Plains into one of the world's great breadbaskets. Communities like this one, small and easy to drive past, were part of a much larger transformation in which immigrant farmers made the semi-arid interior of the continent productive and permanent.
And their journey reframes what we usually mean by the immigrant experience. This was not a single crossing but a double migration — Germany to Russia, then Russia to America — with a distinct identity preserved across all of it: German language and Lutheran faith carried intact through Catherine the Great's steppe and set down again on Kiowa Creek. The cemetery is a quiet monument to how tenaciously a people can hold onto who they are, even while crossing the world to remain free to be it.
If you visit
This is a small, working country cemetery on the plains south of Booker, and its power is in what it represents rather than in any grand monument. Walk the rows and read the family names — Meller, Bechthold, Littau — and let it sink in that these are the surnames of people who traveled, across generations, from Germany to the Russian steppe and finally to this creekside in Texas.
Notice the closeness of the community written in the stones: the same families that chartered the church appear again among the graves, and the descendants of those buried here still tend the ground. That continuity is rare and worth honoring. You are looking at a place cared for by people who can point to their own great-grandparents in the soil.
If you are exploring this corner of the Panhandle, Kiowa Cemetery is a good place to slow down and consider the long, winding roads that brought settlers to the American plains — reminders that many who broke this ground had already broken very similar ground half a world away. Come quietly, leave the stones as you find them, and let the wide sky do the rest.
Written by AI to add context, grounded in the marker’s inscription and the historical record. The inscription above is the original, unaltered text.
Own a business near here? Add it to the map.
Related people
- · Leonhard Littau
- · Katherine Littau
- · Abraham Littau
Related events
- · German-Russian immigration
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
St. John's Lutheran Church Cemetery
Lipscomb, TX
Among the earliest homesteaders of Lipscomb County were German-Russians—Germans whose families had farmed the Russian empire before coming to America—including Jacob and Amalia Koch. They belonged to St. John's Evangelical Lutheran Church, founded by these settlers in 1914, and by 1916 the Koch family let the congregation use their land for burials, formally deeding it in 1950. The first grave, baby Hildegard Schilling in January 1916, began a cemetery that still links the county to its German-Russian heritage.
Fairmont Cemetery
Follett, TX
At the far northern tip of Texas—closer to six other state capitals than to Austin—Fairmont Cemetery outlasted the towns that made it. Settlers founded Ivanhoe in Oklahoma in 1901, moved it to the railroad as South Ivanhoe, then in 1917 dragged its buildings on skids across the state line to a new Santa Fe stop named Follett. The cemetery, deeded in 1910, holds its first burial the reinterred body of a mother of six killed by lightning, alongside the children of Mexican railroad workers lost to the 1918 influenza epidemic and more than a hundred military veterans.
Jones Mansion
Canadian, TX
Thomas Stanley Jones, a Welsh-born rancher who rose to prominence in the Texas Panhandle, had this home built in 1910 for his wife Rosalie and their children. Designed by Amarillo architect E. Wellington, it was the first brick residence in Canadian, its Classical Revival grandeur, monumental Ionic columns, corner quoins, and Renaissance detailing broadcasting the family's standing. The mansion still speaks of Panhandle cattle wealth.
The Oslo Community
Gruver, TX
In 1908 Norwegian native Anders L. Mordt secured the rights to sell a hundred sections of Hansford County land, which he named Oslo and marketed to Norwegian colonies across the Midwest through advertisements in Norwegian-language papers and his own weekly, the Oslo Posten. He staged an annual Syttende Mai celebration of Norwegian Independence Day that drew crowds from across Oklahoma and Texas, and the Oslo Lutheran Church became the settlement's center. Drought ended land sales in 1913 and the railroad bypassed the town, but more than thirty families stayed and the church endures as a monument to their heritage.