Thanks to Leon Henthorne, a volunteer in Callie Faye Milliken Special Collection at ACU, who is transcribing portions of Price Billingsley's handwritten diaries, and Erma Jean Loveland, librarian at ACU, I am pleased to put on-line the following archival items from the Billingsleys diaries.
Price Billingsley was born 22 April 1877 and died 13 Jan 1959. He started his ministry as an itinerant preacher in Louisiana in 1898 and is often cited as the founder of the church in Abilene, Texas. Later he carried out local work in TN, KY, and Ontario, Canada. He wrote for Firm Foundation, Gospel Advocate, and his own paper Gospel Advance, published in Nashville.
Monday, Nov. 12. Not soon can I forget today. Early this morning I was called over the phone by Bro. Leo Boles and informed of the death of David Lipscomb, and asked whether I could be at the funeral. I got Brother Thos Rose to take my place at this Algood meeting, and so took the morning train for Nashville, arriving at noon. Before I got to Lebanon, however, I was joined by Bro W T Kidwell on his way back to Texas, and Brother O P Barry, of Alexander, on his way to the funeral. Barry and I had dinner together (I rather like him - an impulsive, shrewd, business mand and sometimes preacher). Then I met up with Fred Cowin, and went to the South College Street church house, where at 3:30 p.m. the funeral was to be held. We sat in a jam of people for considerably more than an hour before the service began. It all seemed like a dream. There were _many_ preachers in attendance - not only all of Nashville's. but many from other sections, and those who spoke - V G Sewell, who made a rambling but pathetic talk, McQuiddy, who said some good things but his delivery is to me so insipid and conventional, Brother Elam, who was considered the chief speaker, and good Brother C A Moore, who made, I thought, the best talk of all. It was good dark when the talks were done. I then got my first sight of the dear old Brother Lipscomb dead. I was amazed to see how fine looking and tall he was when straightened out in the casket. I saw him when he was dying, and a more abject object of decaying senility I never before beheld - body and soul distraught in the parting! But did I pity him? I pitied myself for not being as ready to die as he! But today herested in the composure and dignity of death and nobility sat upon his features as though stamped by birth, and he showed the youth and preservation he had lacked for twenty years. I could not doubt that there lay the form of a great man! - how great it will take us all some years yet to find out. And I found the relief which violent weeping gives that I h ave not known for years! Nashville has always seemed the city of David Lipscomb - I have never been there with that thought out of mind completely. This conception has colored all my varied relationships to that busy and hard to grasp melting pot and caleoscopic [kaleidoscopic?] beehive of strange energies. And today the shock I suffered when this spell came from off me when I knew it to be no longer his city - that his body had now gone back to the dust and his white soul to heaven - - left in a state bordering collapse. I did not realize how much I had loved and leaned upon him! And tonight I am broken and sad. I went to hear C M Pullias preach a great sermon on the blessings of God speaking to us; am spending the night with Dr J O Cummings, and tomorrow I go back to my meeting at Algood.