Lipscomb Cemetery
Lipscomb, Lipscomb County, Texas
Marker Inscription
The Texas Legislature created Lipscomb County in 1876, naming it for early Texas Statesman Abner Lipscomb. Appoximately ten years later, J.W. Arthur settled in this vicinity and built a wood and sod structure that he used as a general store and post office, which he named Lipscomb. The community that grew around the Lipscomb post office soon developed into the county's seat of government. By 1887, when infant Fred Mehlhop was buried here, the community had formally established Lipscomb Cemetery. His is the fist marked grave, although unmarked graves exist that may predate his burial. Among those interred here are the first Lipscomb County Judge, Tom Connell, as well as other county officals, schoolteachers, ranchers, farmers, and military veterans. An early windmill and storage tank provided water to the site. Over the years, the community met annually for cleanings and decoration days, but today Lipscomb County maintains the burial ground, which is a tie to the area's early settlers and their efforts to develop the northeastern Texas panhandle beginning in the late 19th century. Historic Texas Cemetery - 2005
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
The Texas Legislature created Lipscomb County in 1876 for the early statesman Abner Lipscomb, and about a decade later J. W. Arthur built a sod-and-wood store and post office that gave the county seat its name. The community formally established its cemetery by 1887, when the infant Fred Mehlhop was buried in its first marked grave, though older unmarked burials may lie nearby. County judges, officials, teachers, ranchers, and farmers rest here, a tie to the settlers who first developed the northeastern Panhandle.
Why it matters
Lipscomb Cemetery preserves the founding generation of one of the Panhandle's earliest organized counties, in a town that survived even after the railroad passed it by.
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Related people
- · Abner Lipscomb
- · J. W. Arthur
- · Tom Connell
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
Lipscomb Union Church
Lipscomb, TX
After J. W. Arthur founded Lipscomb in 1886 and it became the county seat, residents organized the non-denominational Lipscomb Union Church in 1908 under its first pastor, the Rev. George A. McKee. The congregation first met in a one-room wooden building that a 1917 tornado shook partly off its foundation, only for members to repair it quickly. Through a century of a small and stable town, its women's Ladies Aid and youth Crusaders kept the church active in local and international relief work.
Lipscomb School
Lipscomb, TX
Soon after Lipscomb was founded around 1886, residents met in 1887 to organize a school district, and the first classes met in a former Dunkard Church bought by the trustees. A two-story frame schoolhouse followed in 1908, and after lightning burned it in 1922 a brick building rose in its place, complete with library, office, and auditorium. The high school graduated its last class in 1941 before consolidation and rural decline finally closed the school in 1975.
Lipscomb County Courthouse
Lipscomb, TX
Lipscomb County, organized in 1887 with the town of Lipscomb as its seat, at first governed itself from a one-story wood frame courthouse. When farms, ranches, and population surged in the century's first decade, voters approved bonds for a larger building, and Amarillo's William M. Rice designed and built it in the Classical Revival style through 1916, with an arched doorway and a Doric-columned pediment. Though the railroad bypassed Lipscomb and kept it the county's smallest town, the courthouse still dominates the townsite and serves as the seat of government.
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.