Andrew A. Lipscomb

Who was Andrew A. Lipscomb?

Andrew Adgate Lipscomb was an American clergyman and educator.

Lipscomb was born in Georgetown, Washington, D.C. As a young man, he entered the ministry of the Methodist Protestant church, joining the Maryland conference in 1835, and for some time was President of the Alabama conference. From 1842 to 1849 he was pastor of the Bibb Street Methodist Protestant Church in Montgomery, Alabama, which was dedicated shortly after his arrival; he had solicited a move to Alabama because the climate was better suited for the pulmonary tuberculosis that had plagued him for a number of years. During his tenure in Montgomery he warned of the dangers of Irish immigration to the United States and the accompanying growth of Catholicism in a book, Our Country: Its Danger and Duty. He fared well in Montgomery as a preacher, providing for a family consisting of a wife, two children, and two sisters, and owning two slaves. Compelled by tuberculosis to retire from the ministry, he founded in 1849 the Metropolitan Institute for Young Ladies at Montgomery, Alabama. Lipscomb then served as the inaugural President of the Tuskegee Female College of the Methodist Episcopal Church South in Alabama.