David Lipscomb - Personal Life

Personal Life

Lipscomb was born to Granville Lipscomb (born January 13, 1802 in Louisa County, Virginia, died November 16, 1853) and his second wife Ann E. Lipscomb (born January 25, 1799 in Louisa County, Virginia, died January 29, 1835 in Illinois) (called "Nancy" in some sources.) Granville had previously been married, on December 14, 1825 in Spotsylvania, Virginia, to the former Ellen Guerner.

Granville and his older brother William Lipscomb were active in the Bean's Creek Baptist Church, where they were listed as the church clerks for 1828-1831 (Granville Lipscomb) and 1844-1876 (William C. Lipscomb). Attempts to convert the Bean's Creek church to Restoration Movement theology was poorly received and Granville Lipscomb's family was expelled in 1831. David was born in Huntland, Tennessee.

The Lipscomb family, originally Baptist, were said to have converted to Restoration Movement Christianity in the mid 1820s while reading Alexander Campbell's periodical Christian Baptist, copies of which had been sent to the Lipscomb's family by Ann's sister Elizabeth (born ca. 1797) and brother-in-law, physician Lunsford Lindsay (born ca. 1793) of Todd County, Kentucky who would later participate in the formation of the Cadiz Christian Church in 1837.

They were said to be charter members of the Old Salem church, according to Dr. Earl Irvin West's Lipscomb biography, The Life and Times of David Lipscomb.

“The Old Salem congregation began in May 1834 with two male members and two females. Also, five colored people belonged. By Christmas that year the number had grown to thirty-four whites and twelve blacks.”

When Lipscomb was three years old (some sources say four), in 1834 or 1835, his father moved the family temporarily to Sangamon County, Illinois, (whose county seat, Springfield, would become the state capital in 1837) for the express purpose of freeing Granville Lipscomb's four slaves. Lipscomb's mother died in Illinois on January 29, 1835; she and some of David's siblings died of malaria while the family lived in Illinois.

Lipscomb's father moved the rest of the family back to Tennessee in 1835 or 1836 and he married his third wife, Jane L. Breedan, (died September 8, 1885), on April 11 or August 11, 1837. A half-brother of David's, also named Granville, was born to Jane Breedan Lipscomb. William Lipscomb would help to found Neely's Bend Church of Christ in April 1872 . Granville Lipscomb, Jr. would become a leader in the Lebanon Church of Christ founded in 1879 in Weakley County, Tennessee.

Lipscomb was married to Miss Margaret Zellner on July 22, 1862. Only one child was born to them. Little Zellner died at the age of nine months of dehydration while teething. However, they reared several children not their own. David Lipscomb died on November 11, 1917, at the age of eighty-six years. Funeral services were held in the College Street Church, where he had been an elder for many years.