Mt. Airy:
The William Lipscomb/William Collins house and cemetery
Franklin County Historical Society, submitted by Frank Cook
Gazing at ruins can evoke different emotions within us. There may be melancholy for what has been irretrievably lost. There can be admiration for the beauty that remains. There is sometimes an appreciation of lessons learned. All of these come to mind when I view the ruins of William and Ann Lipscomb’s house near Huntland.
Salem was already a bustling community when William and Ann Lipscomb arrived in Franklin County from Virginia. Jesse Bean had arrived about 1800. Many Revolutionary War land grant holders arrived ahortly after that. David Crockett had already come and been gone for many years when William and Ann rolled into the community in late 1826 with their nine children, ranging in age from 4 to 24.
In 1828, William Lipscomb purchased 468 acres west of Bean’s Creek for $3740. On a small rise of land, he began constructing a brick house they would call Mt. Airy. The house was almost identical to another one in Franklin County that had been completed a few years earlier. (More about that later.) William would not see the completion of this house. On his 55th birthday, January 17, 1829, he was killed by a falling tree. They buried him about 90 yards west of the house. His epitaph reads, “Esteemed by all who knew him.”
It fell to Ann and her sons to finish the house. Granville and William C. not only helped finish Mt. Airy, but began their own households as well, as the 1830 census shows. The census shows 1 male (John), and 6 females living at Mt. Airy. The family had only 5 females: Ann, Eliza, Ann (the daughter), Frances, and Taphenes. So the census count may have been an error. Or it could show something that we see later – that Ann would always open her home to those in need. As grandson David would later say of her, “a case of want or suffering in her reach never went unaided.”
Some of the Lipscomb children didn’t stay in Franklin County. Dabney and Thomas both became physicians and ended up in Tarrant County, Texas and Bedford County, Tennessee, respectively. Ann married a doctor John Brown and they moved to Mississippi. John moved to Alabama. Frances married Isaac Van Zandt and they moved first to Mississippi and later to Texas.
Ann’s home, as David Lipscomb would later say, “was always a fond resort of her large family of children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren.” Frances Van Zandt returned from Mississippi to have her child, Khleber Miller Van Zandt, at her mother’s home. This K.M. Van Zandt later became one of the founders of Ft. Worth, Texas.
Frances Lipscomb Van Zandt almost became the first lady of Texas. When they moved to Texas, Isaac became part of the government of the Republic of Texas. When Texas became a state, he ran for governor, but died of yellow fever before the election. Today, Isaac and Frances are remembered in a statue near the courthouse of Van Zandt County, Texas.
Elizabeth or Eliza Lipscomb married James G. Collins. They had children Frances Ann in 1832, William Lipscomb in 1834, and Archibald in 1836. William Lipscomb Collins would one day own Mt. Airy when it would become known as the “Collins Brick.” Eliza Collins died about 1838 leaving James with 3 children. He would marry Sarah Breeden in 1840.
One of William and Ann’s children may have been the next one to join their father in the cemetery. There is a large grave-sized slab over one grave which has had all the engraving destroyed by the ravages of time. This could possibly be the grave of Eliza, mentioned above, or son John C., who died in 1847.
Another death in 1847 was William C. Lipscomb’s wife Elizabeth, who is buried near her father-in-law and her four infant children. There are two epitaphs on her tombstone: “Precious on the sight of the Lord is the death of his saints” and “Suffer little children and forbid them not to come unto me for of such is the kingdom of heaven.” William’s son John T. Lipscomb married Mary Montgomery Rutledge. She died in 1871, two years after marrying John T., and is buried in the cemetery. William C. Lipscomb would join them all in 1877.
John C.Lipscomb’s daughter Nancy Jane came to live with Ann at Mt. Airy, since her mother had died in 1840 and her father in 1847. Nancy Jane married Robert Newton Mann, who later became a partner in nearby Falls Mill. Their infant son Garland joined the ever-growing cemetery in 1865. A 22-year-old daughter, Mary F. Mann was buried there in 1882 and a 19-year-old son, Henry Trall Mann in 1891. Their parents joined them in 1895 and 1903.
John C. Lipscomb’s first wife died in Alabama. His second wife, Lucy Meador Dean, survived John C. and later married T.F. Mosely. She died in 1884 and is buried in the cemetery.
The census of 1850 found John’s daughter Nancy Jane living with Ann, along with Eliza’s daughter Frances Collins. Frances (or Fanny) may have moved back and forth as she is also listed in the household of James and Sarah Collins. William Lipscomb (Will) Collins would later also come to live with grandmother Ann.
In the early 1850s Ann had four grandsons in Nashville’s Franklin College: Will Collins, Garland Lipscomb, Ira Lipscomb, and K.M. Van Zandt. She would sometimes send them packages of clothes and money.
The 1860 census found 80-year-old Ann living in the house with her grandson William Lipscomb Collins. William would be married in December 1860 to Mary Jane Bickley, with his cousin David Lipscomb (Granville’s son) performing the ceremony. David preached all over middle Tennessee and eventually formed the Bible college that became David Lipscomb College (now Lipscomb University).
Also living in the house in 1860 was an 8-year-old named Eliza D. Miller. Who exactly Eliza was is unknown. The Van Zandts had some friends in Mississippi named Miller. Perhaps that is the connection.At any rate, it no doubt shows once again Ann’s willingness to offer help to anyone in need.
Most farms at that time owned slaves to help work the land. The slave census of 1860 shows 11 slaves under Ann’s name: 4 adult males, 2 adult females, and 5 minor children. In 1830 Ann’s son Granville had begun reading the works of Alexander Campbell and doing much Bible study. Along with his brothers Dabney and John, he formed the Salem Church of Christ (which still meets today). As a result of Bible study, the three brothers concluded that owning slaves was wrong. In 1835, Granville, Dabney, and John decided to move their families to Illinois, along with all their slaves who wanted to go. There they freed those slaves across the river in the Indiana territory. The move, however, was deadly for the family. Granville’s wife and three children died of malaria. Dabney lost his wife and one child. All three families returned to Tennessee.
The decade beginning in 1860 was a tumultuos time in America. Franklin County was an area with strong secessionist support, but not everyone was a secessionist. David Lipscomb’s book, “The Christian and Civil Government” lays out his case that Christians should be fighting spiritual, not carnal battles, and indeed, that they should associate with civil government as little as possible.
Other Lipscombs did not hesitate to plunge into the conflict. Thomas’ son Willie rode with Nathan Bedford Forrest and was killed near Mt.Pleasant, Tennessee. William C.’s son Ira died near Petersburg, Virginia. Granville’s widow Jane as well as William C. Lipscomb were cited by the Union Provost Marshal as guilty of “harboring bushwhackers.”
Ann contributed to the war effort by knitting socks for the soldiers, but she would have much preferred peace. When news came of the first conflict in the war and the first Yankees killed, Ann was heard to give a deep sigh. One of the family heard her and said, “Why Aunt, the killed were not our boys.” To which she replied, “No, but they are somebody’s boys that will surely mourn for them.”
In spite of Ann wanting peace, the war came to her doorstep. David Lipscomb and both of his biographers state that Ann’s house was cleaned out by Sherman’s men on her 84th birthday. Perhaps this is true. Sherman’s army did come through Franklin County on the way from Vicksburg to Chattanooga. The timing, however, suggests another possibility. Sherman’s army didn’t come through till November of that year. On Ann’s birthday, August 8, 1863, most of the Yankees in the area were General McCook’s men, whom Rosecrans had sent from Decherd to Stevenson, Alabama. Whoever the guilty party was, the result was that the bedridden Ann was moved out of her beloved Mt.Airy and taken to live with daughter Tapheneas Hunt. There she stayed till her death six years later.
William and Ann Lipscomb’s youngest daughter Tapheneas (called Aunt Tappie by David Lipscomb) had married Clinton Armstrong Hunt, who established the town of Huntland. Their daughter Annie married H.R. Moore. An infant son of Annie and H.R. was buried in the Lipscomb cemetery in 1868. (H.R. and Annie’s granddaughter, Sarah Hunt Moore, sometimes contributed to the Franklin County Historical Society, such as her articles in the June 1974 publication.)
On March 26, 1870, Ann Lipscomb completed her sojurn in life, ending it as the matriarch
of 11 children, 58 grandchildren, and 76 great-grandchildren. She was brought back to the family cemetery and laid to rest next to husband William. Her epitaph reads, “Blessed are the dead that die in the Lord, that they may rest from their labours.”
The census of 1870 found William Lipscomb Collins and his wife Mary living in Mt. Airy, along with their children Frances (Fanny), James, and Archibald (Archy). Mary did not survive the decade, dying on April 1, 1877 and being laid to rest in the cemetery. William remarried; Sallie Carson was his second wife.
The 1880 censu shows William Lipscomb and Sallie (Sarah) Collins living in the house with six children: Frances, James, Archibald, Joseph, W. G., and Mary J. William was both a farmer and a shopkeeper in Salem.
1895 began a really rough time for the family. In August, stepmom Sallie Carson Collins died and was laid to rest in the cemetery. Less than three months later, William Lipscomb Collins died and was laid to rest in the cemetery. In January 1896, William’s son James died at age 32 and joined his parents in the cemetery. This led to a court action in September 1898 in which the farm was divided up between the heirs. From then until his death in 1941, William’s son Joe lived in the house.
The census of 1900 shows James’ widow Lizzie O’Neal Collins living in the house with her children Gaston (who was this author’s grandfather), Mollie, and Willie, along with Lizzie’s brother-in-law Joe. By 1910, Gaston had left. By 1920, Mollie and Willie had also left. By 1930, Lizzie had moved away, and Joe was joined in the house with his brother Archibald and his wife. The last recorded burial in the family cemetery had been Archibald and Mollie’s infant son, Arch Collins, who was buried in 1904.
When Joe died in 1941, the house went through a time when it sat vacant. Then the land was sold, and the house was used as a barn. Time and neglect and storms did their work, and today the house is in ruins. Unfortunately, it is unstable and visitors are not allowed.
Fortunately, if we want an idea of what the house looked like in better days, there is an almost identical house in much better shape. The Simmons-Weddington House is the subject of an excellent article by Joy Gallagher in the October 2010 Historical Tidings. This house was apparently built about 1824 to 1827, and was no doubt copied by William and Ann Lipscomb. William and Ann’s son, Granville, owned this house from 1830 til 1834 and this was where David Lipscomb was born in 1831.
Like the Lipscomb/Collins house, the Lipscomb/Collins Cemetery has also had much neglect. Recently, it has been cleaned off after neglect of about 40 years. A non-invasive biocide has been applied to the tombstones, and most of them are still readable. The right-of-way is impassable, and the surrounding fields are sown in crops most of the time, but a complete listing of all the stones follows this article.
Sitting in the newly cleaned off cemetery, I’m reminded that “the paths of glory lead but to the grave.” Like the crumbling structure across the way, everything in this life must pass away. And like the epitaph on Robert Newton Mann’s tombstone, we “await the resurrection
with all the faithful.”
Further Reading
Cemetery Records of Franklin County, Tennessee, by the Franklin County Historical Society
The Life and Times of David Lipscomb, by Earl West
Crying in the Wilderness: a biography of David Lipscomb, by Robert E. Hooper.
Force Without Fanfare, by K.M. Van Zandt
Buy the Truth and Sell it Not: The Life of E. Gaston Collins, by Frank N. Cook