James Joshua "Josh" Lipscomb was born March 1864 in Tucker County, W. Va. He was married to SUSAN VIRGINIA DAWSON August 1888 “by A. W. Love” at Tucker County, W. Va.

Susan was seven years older than Josh. She was born 18 September 1856 in Beach, Va. [in the section of Hampshire County that became Mineral County, W. Va. in 1866]. Her parents were John O. Dawson and Barbara Custer. Susan’s daughter Mary Ann “Mollie” (Lipscomb) Dornon has written that “Susan had four out of wedlock children by Samuel Walker of Mineral County before she married to Josh Lipscomb. All of them went by the last name Walker: Samuel, Robert, Virginia ‘Jennie,’ and Martin. I scarcely knew my half-brothers. We did not have much to do with each other. My father Josh Lipscomb adopted my half-sister Virginia ‘Jennie,’ who later married to George Washington Hebb. Jennie died in 1902 - she was only about twenty-one years old. George then married Bertie (Wes Lipscomb’s daughter).”


A most likely apocryphal story has been told about Josh Lipscomb: “There was a Joshua up on Limestone Mountain – he could have been this Joshua Lipscomb - who got arrested for operating an illegal whisky still and was hauled in front of a magistrate down in Parsons. That magistrate fancied himself a student of the Bible. On seeing the name on the complaint, the magistrate remarked to the prisoner: ‘Joshua? Did you know there was a Joshua in the Bible who caused the sun to stand still?’ Josh replied: ‘Well, your honor, I reckon that feller was a distant cousin. I’m the Joshua who made the moonshine.’”

Josh was raised on his parents’ farm at Hile Run, below Location Road near Leadmine, in Tucker County. “It was across the creek from the old George Hopkins place, where Lee and Judy (Lipscomb) Wotring now live [1967].” Josh’s farm “included some or all of his father’s property. It was adjacent to the farm of Frank Pifer.” Josh died on his farm of “unknown cause” 11 August 1928, at age 64.48

Three months after Josh’s death, “Susan Lipscomb and Elsie Moats her daughter” sold “40 acres of land at the Head of Hile Run, formerly owned by Joshua Lipscomb, to Maud Likens.”
Susan in 1930 was boarding with the Mack Rinehart family at Union District (Preston County), W. Va.50 She later lived with her granddaughter Marie (Walker) Riley at 231 Newton Street, in Keyser, W. Va. Susan died at Potomac Valley Hospital in Keyser, “age 84,” on 10 June 1941. She is buried in the Dayton Cemetery at 21st Bridge, near McCoole, in Allegany County, Md.

Family Notes: Josh Lipscomb and wife Susan were the parents of two daughters. Mary Ann “Mollie” Lipscomb (1888-1990) married in 1906 to Charles E. Dornon (1883-1946; Chief of Police at Piedmont, W. Va.), the son of Thomas Dornon and Amanda Barker. Charles died at Piedmont of a heart attack after being severely beaten by two men he had just arrested.
Mollie died at the advanced age of 102 years, two months, and last resided at Baltimore, Md. She was thus the second longest-lived female descendant of Ambrose Lipscomb [after Merle Sarah Dessie (Lipscomb) Adams (1903-2008), who died at age 105 years, two months. Merle was a daughter of No. 134 Oliver Marvin Lipscomb].

Elsie Gladys Lipscomb (1898-1986) married (1) in 1919 to her second cousin once removed Mack Arthur Moats (1885-1941; Elsie married (2) 1943 to widower Charles Bell “Charlie” Sisler (1895-1976), son of Henry Clay Sisler and Sarah Matilda Teets. Charlie’s late first wife was Elsie’s first cousin Hester Victoria “Ada” Harrison (1891-1932), a daughter of James Gyles Losh Harrison and Syrena Catherine Lipscomb.

from unpublished book of Jeffrey Lipscomb.