James Davis Billingsley is Dead.

We can scarcely realize that he is gone, yet the sad reality is forced upon us. I last saw him at the depot in Rockwood in May 1888 where he and Bro. Brown had gone to assist me on the train. I was very, very sick with malarial fever, he in the vigor of youthful manhood—now he is dead and I, on my sixty seventh anniversary birth day am writing his obituary. He was the third son of J.D. and Mary B. Billingsley, and was born near Pikeville, Tenn., Oct. 5, 1859. Was taken sick with remittent fever Dec. 8, 1889. Died Jan. 13, 1890, hence on the day of his death he was thirty years, three months and eight days old. His boyhood was spent on a farm, while his father was from home most of his time preaching the gospel. The son was baptized by our lamented brother W. Y. Kuykendall, and united with the home congregation at Cold Spring. For this congregation he held a protracted meeting including the fourth Sunday in last August which added fourteen members to the saved. His father died in September 1877; and in February 1879 his mother with three sons, S.A., J.D. and John moved to Spencer, and the three boys entered Burritt College of which I was then president. I gave him the position of Bellman, the duties of which he faithfully performed, thus paying, mainly, his own way through college. While he prosecuted his literary course he was also a member of my Theological class of young men who were preparing (or the ministry. With one exception that class was composed of stout healthy young men, yet he is the fifth who has already crossed over the river. He graduated in Burritt College in July 1883. In the spring of 1884 he went to Hampton, Ga., where he taught school and preached occasionally. In 1885 he quit school teaching and entered upon his life’s work as a preacher. He preached that year for the church in Griffin, Ga., and held some very successful meetings in various places in Middle and Southern Georgia. After this year his services were in demand everywhere in reach of where he had been as a preacher. In 1886 he began preaching in Rockwood where there were about a dozen members. He also preached for the church at Post Oak Springs only a few miles east of Rockwood where his father had preached during the latter years of his life. He preached for the congregation at Rockwood nearly three years, and at his death the number had gone up to one hundred and twenty or thirty; and they had built and owned a good house of worship. There have been added at other places in Roane Comity, Tenn., by his labors about one hundred members; and it is deemed safe to say that at least three hundred members have been added to the church in Georgia and Tennessee by his labors in the last three years. I think I can safely say that I never knew a man more universally beloved by those for whom he labored than was J.D. Billingsley. I spent all April 1888 in Southern Georgia where he had been operating and I found his praise in all the churches. We came together to Rockwood, Tenn., where we began a meeting in May, and there I found the brethren and sisters perfectly devoted to him. They loved him, and well they might, for he had done a great work among them. While living at Spencer he visited Post Oak Springs and baptized a young lady, the first person he ever baptized. To this young lady he was to have been married on the first day of January last, but when the day came he was so very ill that the marriage was postponed for a month—as he died on the 13th, of course the marriage was never consummated. At Rockwood is as true a band of Christians as it has ever been my pleasure to know; and from them during his sickness he received every attention that true hearts and faithful hands could give; but death claimed Him as his own; and as bright a star as ornamented the pulpit of the church of Christ in Tennessee parsed into the valley of the shadow of death to re-appear on the other shore "in the dawning of the morning when the mists have cleared away.” The funeral services were conducted by Bro. Moore, of Chattanooga, in the presence of a vast concourse of sorrowing friends, after which all that was mortal of J.D. Billingsley was laid to rest in Rockwood cemetery on a beautiful hill overlooking the meeting-house in which he had long and faithfully labored. His Sunday-school held memorial services in his honor on the last Sunday in January....
--T.W. Brents, Lewisburg, Tenn., Feb. 10, 1890, Gospel Advocate, Wednesday, February 19, 1890, page 126.