The Reverend Thomas Lippincott was born in Salem, New Jersey, on February 6th, 1791. After spending a short time in Philadelphia, he removed to Lumberland, New York, in 1814. Here he married on August 15, 1816, and late in the fall of 1817 he started for the West, with his wife and an infant daughter. On December 1st they embarked at Pittsburg, with another family, on a Monongahela flat-boat, which they had chartered to convey them down the Ohio. On the 30th of the same month, they landed at Shawneetown. He found his way to St. Louis, then but a village, and engaged as a clerk, but soon entered into business for himself. He took a stock of goods to Milton, Illinois, where his wife established the first Sabbath School in that state. His next place of residence was Edwardsville, where, certainly for one year, he was editor of the Edwarsville Spectator, and during the six years in which the paper was published in Edwardsville, he was a constant contributor to its columns. While in Edwardsville, besides his editorial duties, he was clerk in the Land Office and Justice of the Peace. Mr. Lippincott was an elder in the Presbyterian Church at Edwardsville. He was licensed to preach October 8th, 1828, and ordained October 19th, 1829 at the first meeting of the Centre Presbytery of Illinois. His stated labors were exclusively with the churches within the bounds of the Synod of Illinois. He also acted for several months as Agent of the American Sunday-School Union. His last field was Dacoign, in Perry County. No man in the Synod was more universally loved and respected. He was the first Moderator of the Presbytery of Alton. He died in April, 1869.
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Abia Swift Lippincott Gilman was the daughter of Reverend Thomas and Patience “Patty” Swift Lippincott, who married August 15, 1816. On July 3, 1817, their first child – Abia Swift Lippincott – was born in Lumberland, New York, where Lippincott was working for a lumber dealer. On October 28, 1817, when Abia was three months old, the Lippincotts left Lumberland to seek a new home in the West. They traveled in a one-horse wagon, and then joined a party of 25 people in a flat-bottomed boat. After reaching Shawneetown, Illinois, they took a wagon and drove for nine days, reached the Mississippi River on January 17, 1819, and took a ferry across the river to St. Louis. At St. Louis, they were welcomed by Mr. Lippincott’s brother, Samuel. Thomas Lippincott first worked as a clerk in St. Louis, and became acquainted with Colonel Rufus Easton. The Colonel asked him to take goods to establish a store in his newly found Alton in Illinois, which he laid out in 1817. They formed a partnership as Lippincott & Co., and Thomas loaded his goods onto a boat, and disembarked at Alton. Once at Alton, he heard of the flourishing town called Milton near the Wood River (which was more populated at the time), and decided to set up his store there.
The Reverend and his wife established the first Sabbath School in the State of Illinois at the small settlement of Milton. Within a few months after his arrival, he received a commission as Justice of the Peace. An epidemic fever occurred at Milton, caused by the damming of the Wood River for saw mill purposes. Patience Lippincott became sick with the fever. Rev. Lippincott placed her in a buggy and drive ten or twelve miles a day into the country, away from the unhealthy Wood River. At first, she improved, but when they reached a friend’s house on Silver Creek in St. Clair County, near Shiloh, she took very ill. She died October 14, 1819, nine days after giving birth to a son, which did not survive. The Reverend buried his wife in the old cemetery at Shiloh, and returned to Milton with his daughter Abia. He married again to Henrietta Maria Slater, who died in September 1820, of the same malarial fever (she is possibly buried in the Milton Cemetery). Lippincott then fled Milton, along with most of the other inhabitants of the town. Lippincott moved to Edwardsville with his daughter, Abia, and worked in the Edwardsville Land Office. He married again on October 21, 1821 at Edwardsville, to Catherine Wyley Leggett. The Reverend and Catherine had three children: Charles Ellet Lippincott (1825-1887); Mary Jane Lippincott Saunders (1826-1901); and Alexander Lockwood Lippincott (1830-1852). Catherine died in 1850, and is buried in the Upper Alton Oakwood Cemetery. Rev. Lippincott married again November 27, 1851, to Lydia Fairchild Barnes. Rev. Lippincott died in 1869, and Lydia Lippincott died in 1873. Both are buried in the Upper Alton Oakwood Cemetery.