Abner Smith Lipscomb was born on February 10, 1789 in Abbeville District, South Carolina, United States. His parents, Elizabeth Chiles and Joel Lipscomb, were both natives of Virginia. His father early removed to South Carolina and there bore a part in the American Revolution.
During his boyhood young Lipscomb attended the rural schools of Abbeville District.
Lipscomb read law in the office of John C. Calhoun and was admitted to the bar in 1811. He moved west and settled at St. Stephens on the Tombigbee River, in what was then the Mississippi Territory, afterward a part of Alabama. Here he rose rapidly in his profession and in 1819, at the age of thirty, was appointed one of the circuit judges, who, sitting in banc, constituted the supreme court.
Four years later he became chief justice of the supreme court, a position he held for twelve years. His opinions are to be found in the first ten volumes of the Alabama Reports. In 1835 he resigned from the supreme court and opened a law office in Mobile. Three years later, upon the unsolicited nomination of his party, he became a candidate and was elected to the legislature as a Democrat in a district overwhelmingly Whig in sentiment.
The next year, resigning his seat in the legislature, he once more heeded the call of the frontier and removed to Texas where he speedily acquired a large law practice. He had resolved to stay out of public life, for which he had undoubted talent but little taste, but within a year after his arrival he had allowed President Mirabeau B. Lamar to persuade him to accept the office of secretary of state of the young Republic of Texas in 1840. In 1846 the new governor, J. Pinckney Henderson, appointed him a justice of the supreme court. This position he filled most acceptably until his death in 1856, having twice been elected to the office by popular vote. He also taught Law courses at Baylor University from 1849 to 1856.
His opinions, which are to be found in the first seventeen volumes of the Texas Reports, were usually short and to the point, and were generally couched in the forceful language of the frontier. Law books were almost non-existent, both in Alabama and in Texas, and the opinions of the courts were largely the product of the logic and sense of justice of the judges who composed them. Nearly half of the opinions handed down by the supreme court of Texas from 1845 to 1856, including most of those dealing with questions of procedure, were written by Lipscomb. Thus it was that he had a conspicuous part in laying the foundations of the jurisprudence of two important Southern states.
Lipscomb had a conspicuous part in laying the foundations of the jurisprudence of two important Southern states, Alabama and in Texas. As a member of the legislature and chairman of the judiciary committee he did much to simplify the system of pleading and practice in use in Alabama state. He also took an important part in framing the constitution for the new state Texas, and to him have been attributed the provisions for homestead exemption and marital rights which have won admiration from statesmen in other lands.
Lipscomb was a warm advocate of annexation and as a member of the Convention of 1845 introduced the resolutions accepting the terms of annexation proposed by the United States.
Lipscomb was twice married: on April 13, 1813, to Elizabeth Gaines, the daughter of a planter of St. Stephens, Alabama, who died in 1841; and on May 10, 1843, to Mary P. Bullock, daughter of Dr. Thomas Hunt, of Austin, Texas.
