In the death of Dr. W. L. Lipscomb, which occurred at the home of his son, Dr. J. W. Lipscomb on Main Street, at an early hour last Friday morning, May 22nd, Columbus has lost one of her oldest and noblest citizens, a man whose long life was a life of usefulness and oe whose gentle nature and splendid mid cheered and inspired all with whom he came in contact.  He was one of those noble men in whom honesty, purity, and reverence for all things good are innate, and his earthly journey of four score years was devoted to faithful and efficient work for God and his fellow men.  He had practically all his life been an earnest and consistent Christian, and his profession, that of a physician, afforded splendid opportunities for a work which he held dear, that of alleviating the pain and suffering of his fellow creatures. 

    Dr. Lipscomb was born in Tuscaloosa County, Ala., in 1828, but came to Columbus with his parents when a lad of four years, and practically all of his life had been spent here.  He chose medicine as a profession, and at the outbreak of the War between the States in 1861 went to the front as a surgeon.  He was taken a prisoner at Pensacola, but was exchanged, and throughout the entire conflict devoted his energies to caring for sick and wounded soldiers.  He was attached to several different surgical staffs, much of his time having been spent in attendance upon the disabled soldiers who were brought to the Confederate hospital which was maintained in this city. hi

    In 1854 Dr. Lipscomb was married to Miss Taleulah Harris, daughter of the late Col. Geo. H. Harris.  Several children blessed the union and besides his widow four sons and three daughters are left to mourn the loss of the departed husband and father.  Two of his sons reside in Columbus, Prof. Dabney Lipscomb, who is professor of economics at the Industrial Institute and College, and Dr. J. W. Lipscomb, a prominent local physician.  The two remaining sons, Rev. Thomas Lipscomb and Rev. Wadsworth Lipscomb are both Methodist ministers, the former being stationed at Hattiesburg and the latter at Friar's Point.  The three daughters are Mrs. Ernest Beard, of this City.  Mrs. Mary Hargrove of Kansas City, Mo., and Mrs. B. W. Waters, who is engaged in missionary work in Japan. 

    Dr. Lipscomb was one of the oldest members of the First Methodist church, his name having appeared on the original roll.  Of the first one thousand members enrolled, his name was one of the two which remained, and now that he is dead there is but one living member whose name appears among the first one thousand enrolled.  Dr. Lipscomb has filled almost every office in the church, and for quite a long period of time was superintendent of the Sunday school.  During recent years, however, his health has been so feeble that he was forced to remain at home practically al of the time, and was therefore reluctantly compelled to give up his religious work, as well as his labors in other fields. 

    The funeral occurred at the First Methodist church at ten o'clock Saturday morning, having been conducted by the pastor, Rev. J. W. Shoaff, D. D., who was assisted by Rev. S. L. Pope, pastor of the Second Methodist church.  The obsequies were attended by a large concourse of sorrowing relatives and friends, and the floral offerings were both numerous and beautiful.  The interment was at Friendship Cemetery.  Messrs. L. A. Vaughan, P. W. Maer, C. F. Sherrod, J. P. Mayo, B. D. Ervin and O. P. Brown were the active pall-bearers, while Dr. R. S. Curry, Col. W. C. Richards, Dr. R. L. Sykes, Col. G. W. Abert, Gen. E. T. Sykes, Messrs. R. T. Williams, W. C. Beard and T. B. Franklin officiated as honorary pall-bearers.--Columbus Dispatch, May 24, 1908.

    The death of Dr. William Lowndes Lipscomb which occurred at the residence of his son, Dr. J. W. Lipscomb on last Friday morning at five o'clock. May 22d, was felt by every man, woman and child in Columbus, where he was known and loved by all. He was a son of Dr. Dabney Lipscomb, who was for two terms President of Mississippi State Senate, and who practiced medicine in Columbus from 1832 to 1850. He was born January 3, 1828, in Tuscalooss County, Ala. He moved with his parents to Columbus in 1832, then a village of about 500 people. Educated at the Franklin Academy and in private schools of the town, till he went to Lagrange College near Tuscumbia, Ala., of which Rev. Robert Paine, afterwards Bishop Paine, was President. He next read medicine in his father's office, and then went to the medical department of the University of New Orleans, now Tulane University, from which he graduated in 1850 with classmates such as Drs. Beard, Choppin, Cracour, and others since famous in New Orleans.

    On the death of his father in 1850 he settled in Columbus to practice medicine, to care for his mother, and younger brothers and sisters. In December, 1854, he was married to Miss Tallulah Harris, daughter of Col. Geo. H. Harris. 

    When the trouble between the States came up he enlisted as a private but was soon commissioned by President Davis as assistant surgeon, and ordered to Pensacola, Fla. There he was captured and imprisoned. While in prison he was cheered by visits from his devoted Christian wife. After he was released he served as surgeon in charge of hospitals in New Orleans and Columbus, Miss., and as medical director of the army under Gen. S. D. Lee. After the close of the war he helped to establish and edit The Columbus Democrat, and in its columns opposed vigorously both the Alcorn and Dent tickets. For about forty years he practiced medicine in Columbus — prominent in the State Medical Association — always deeply interested in the welfare of the town politically, industrially, religiously, socially and educationally. He was active in every good work and movement. In his large practice he never failed to administer to rich and poor alike, in spiritual advice as well as medical skill. For thirty years or more he was Superintendent of the First M. E. Sunday School. He was County Superintendent of Education for ten years. He was a devoted friend of children. His address on "The Jack Knife" in 1873 to the pupils of Franklin Academy is remembered even yet by many who heard it as one of the best deliveries of Dr. Lipscomb, well known as one of the most original and effective speakers of the country.

    For the past fifteen or twenty years partial blindness impaired his usefulness; this ended in total blindness about two years ago. Granted to him all of this, he bore with astonishing cheerfulness and resignation and to the end manifested unflagging interest in all that pertains to the welfare of the town he had lived in seventy-six years and loved so ardently. Thus it seems that as a people we are better and stronger for his life. He was really even eager to go hence and his family and friends could not wish to keep him longer when every hour meant but that much more of suffering to him. "There is no death — Death is the great fulfillment of life." To this heritage he has gone. In his last hours his devoted wife and all his children, except two, who are across the ocean, administered unto him.

    The writer knew Dr. Lipscomb only to love him and feel a deep personal grief that he is forced to give up so good, pure and warm-hearted a friend.

    The funeral services were conducted Saturday morning at 11 o'clock from the First Methodist Church by Dr. Shoaff and his remains were lovingly and tenderly laid to rest in Friendship Cemetery by his old comrades, accompanied by a large concourse of devoted friends.

— Columbus Commercial, May 24, 1908. 

    The foregoing tributes to Dr. W. L. Lipscomb give fairly well the leading facts of his life and the esteem in which hewas held by those who knew him best in the place which was his home for nearly four-score years. 

    It may not be amiss to add a brief sketch of the Lipscomb family — a distinctively Southern one — with its several Virginia, South Carolina, and Tennessee branches, from which a large connection has descended extending through the Gulf States, and westward through Missouri to Colorado and even to California. 

    Of Dr. Lipscomb's most notable characteristics and of the chief services he rendered his generation during his long and eminently useful life, it may also be worth the while to speak somewhat more fully in this introductory biographical sketch. 

ANCESTRY.

    The Lipscombs of America come from the family or families to which the Lipscombs of southwest England — a numerous connection — trace their origin. Throughout that section are many families with names of kindred derivation, such as the Whitcombs, Dunscombs, Welcombs, Holcombs and others, often adding a final e to the name. Evidently there is a geographic significance attached to these family names, designating apparently people who lived on the combs, or ridges, that form a conspicuous feature of English landscapes in the southwestern counties. Conan Doyle in his "White Company" represents Sir Arthur Lipscomb as a valiant follower of the Black Prince in France and Spain. In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, representatives of the Lipscomb families in England rose to prominence as bishops in the church, scholars in the universities, and surgeons in army or navy, and one or two became archaeologists and antiquarians of more than local distinction.

    In the seventeenth century, very probably, with one of the Lords Baltimore, the ancestor of the Lipscombs in America crossed the ocean. Tradition has it that he had been connected with the ill-fated Monmouth expedition and for safety sought refuge in America. What he did and exactly where he lived in Maryland or Virginia is not definitely known. This refugee ancestor, Joel by name, left three sons, John, Thomas and William. Thomas, from whom Dr. W. L. Lipscomb is descended lived before the Revolution in Spottsylvania County, Virginia, and had four sons and two daughters. His two oldest sons, Joel and Nathan, it seems with their Uncle William, moved to South Carolina before the war with England; for the records show that they there participated in the partisan warfare that signalized the patriots of that State. John, the third son, married and remained in Virginia, some of his descendants still living there and others living now in Kentucky and further west. David and William, fourth and fifth sons of Thomas Lipscomb, moved to Tennessee and became men of distinction and influence. From them the large Tennessee branch of the family trace their lineage. 

    Joel Lipscomb, grand-father of W. L. Lipscomb, who had moved from Virginia to South Carolina, before the Revolution, after the formation of the Mississippi Territory, again moved with his growing family to what is now Greene County, Ala. There he raised a large family and died in 1838 at a ripe old age. His second son, Abner Smith Lipscomb was for years Chief Justice of Alabama, which position he resigned and moving to Texas helped to bring that State into the Union and died there, one of the Supreme Judges of the State, in 1857. 

    Of Dr. Dabney Lipscomb, fourth son of Joel Lipscomb, who moved to Columbus, Mississippi, in 1832, a sketch will be found in the Chapter XIV of the History of Columbus. His son, William Lowndes, was but four years old when hecame to the villiage of Columbus, his future life-long home. 

CHARACTER AND SERVICES.

    The most salient features of Dr. W. L. Lipscomb's character were clearness and incisiveness of intellect, independence and aggressiveness in action, and the strength and breadth of his sympathies and affection. These qualities made him an acknowledged leader in whatever cause he espoused. As a layman, in every field of church effort he was intelligently and deeply interested, and was influential in all its conferences from that of his home chLirch to the General Conference of the Southern Methodist Church to which he was twice a delegate from the North Mississippi Annual Conference. The history and enterprises of the church were familiar to him, and few even among the ministry could state its doctrines so clearly or defend them so ably as he.

    Into medicine he carried the same vigorous, analytic, independent habit of thought and action. Doubtless his large experience as surgeon in the Confederate army contributed to the self-reliance and directness with which he took hold of and managed his cases. As a diagnostician he was so successful, that in addition to his large practice, he was the physician of the town and county most often called into consultation. Prompt and permanent relief with as few visits and as little expense as possible otherwise to his patrons was evidently his rule in the practice of medicine.

    A "Bourbon Democrat," he opposed any compromise with carpet-baggars, scalawags, or negroes after the war, and was influential in keeping negroes from becoming office-holders in Lowndes County. Just always to the negro, he insisted that the white man must rule, and demanded such a plank in county, state, and national platforms. Knowing well his uncompromising attitude toward them, he was yet one of the truest friends and advisers of the negroes of the town in the political revolution of 1875 and ever since. They knew they could trust him and that he would stoutly defend them in all the rights and privileges which should be conceded to them. In conventions he was a masterful debater and parlimentarian and a ready, forceful speaker on the stump or the platform.

    Next after his profession and his church, he however was most constantly interested in the cause of education, especially the education best suited to the needs of the childrenof the South. The Franklin Academy, the school of his boyhood, was the school ever closest to his heart; and it was with genuine satisfaction and pride that as County Superintendent of Education he so managed its funds as to be able to turn over to its trustees money sufficient to erect the present building without tax on the town. 

    In 1870, as Secretary of the Board of Trustees of the Columbus Female Institute, he drew up the memorial adopted by them offering the Institute to the State University as a Woman's Department of the University, fifteen years before as the Mississippi Industrial Institute and College its doors were opened to the girls of the State. How since then he watched with pleasure its splendid development, his friends well know. 

    He was ever also an ardent advocate of the public school system, giving the butcher's boy the same chance for a start in life as the banker's, bringing rich and poor into close and sympathetic contact; welding thus all ranks in bonds of mutual respect and co-operative upward progress.

    He was a true democrat religiously, politically, educationally, socially; hence, was the friend and champion of every cause that sought to bless all alike. Naturally, he was beloved, trusted, and praised by those in any circumstances of life that hoped and worked for the good of the whole town and county.

Source:  History of Columbus, Mississippi During the 19th Century, by Dr. W. L. Lipscomb, c. 1909, pgs. 7-12.