My Genealogy Hound

Rev. J. C. Shipp, living in Dutch Creek Township, and a licensed minister of the Methodist Episcopal Church South denomination, was born in Holmes County, Miss., January 15, 1835. His parents, Josiah and Susan (Smith) Shipp, were originally of Tenn., the senior Shipp born April 5, 1804, and his wife August 13, 1812, but were married in Mississippi about 1834, and followed farming as an occupation, and in 1845 left Mississippi for Hardin County, Tenn., where the family remained till the death of the father, in 1868, the widow dying in this county October 29, 1880. They were members of long standing in the Methodist Episcopal Church, he having united with it some thirty-two years before his death and she walking in its doctrines for fifty years. When twenty-one the principal of this sketch accepted as his starting point in this world’s warfare, a position in the dry-goods house of A. C. Winingham & Co., at Hamburg, Tenn. Here he remained clerking till the outbreak of the Rebellion, when he joined the Confederate Army, enlisting in Company E, Fourth Regiment of Infantry, Capt. J. O. Tarkington, commander; he took part in many of the battles in Mississippi, at Memphis, and particularly with Hood in his raid to Nashville; was wounded at the battle of Okalona (Miss.), and taken prisoner twice, but managed to escape each time, and while at Gainesville, May 10, 1865, was paroled. On receiving his final discharge from army life, he returned to his home and engaged in farming, and December 10, 1865, witnessed his marriage to Mrs. Saluda J. Leeth, widow of Harrison L. Leeth, who was accidentally killed. She was born in the Old Dominion, October 11, 1838, and is the daughter of Peter and Mary Ashworth, and who were born in Virginia, in 1804 and 1805, respectively. Emigrating to Tennessee the year of their daughter’s birth, they died June 3, and October 17, 1855. Our subject and wife have these children, among others: Sarah (wife of Jacob Sweeney), John B., Emily (wife of M. B. Brooks), Martha (wife of F. Beech), Mollie (wife of P. Alley), living; and James, Alden and Susan (deceased). He received his license to preach while a resident of Tennessee, and followed this calling till 1878, when he located in Yell County, where he now lives and owns 180 acres of rich land, forty of which are thoroughly cultivated and improved with good barns, outhouses, and the most essential of all things, good wells of water, and a fine orchard of some 400 fruit-bearing trees. Mrs. Shipp is an earnest Methodist, belonging to the same church as her husband, and he socially affiliates with the Dutch Creek Masonic Lodge No. 269.