Biographical sketch of William LINDSAY:
William, a son of William and Mary Lindsay, and an older brother of Elder Jonathan S. Lindsay, was born in Carter (now Johnson) County, Tenn., in the year 1821.
The family moved to Campbell County when William was a very small boy. Here he grew to manhood, working on the farm, spring, summer and autumn, and at “the forge” during the winter months. His educational advantages were limited. At the age of twenty, he was married to Miss Huldy Cooper. To this union were born eleven children.
He professed faith in Christ in his twentieth year and was baptized, uniting with the Indian Creek Church. Soon after his conversion he began to preach, exercising his gift as an opportunity offered, but was not ordained till about the year 1851. He was ordained by the authority of the Indian Creek Church.
His ministry was in Anderson, Campbell, Morgan, Roane, Scott, Union and Knox counties. He was well acquainted with such “pioneer preachers” as Joshua Frost, William Hickle, Jonathan Bishop, and Chesley H. Boatwright, and entered into and continued their labors.
He was the second and fifth pastor of Longfield Church (near Coal Creek), serving the church from 1851 to 1881, and from ’85 to ’87, a period altogether of some thirty-two or thirty-three years. He was also pastor of a great many other churches, scattered over a large territory. He did a great deal of protracted meeting and missionary work, and was said to be “an able and successful evangelist.” He was also a “strong defender” of the Baptist faith and of “the true doctrines of the Bible.”
In 1868 he was chosen moderator of the Clinton Association.
He was faithful in his generation and made a good record alike as a pastor and as an evangelist. In September of 1887 he died in the triumph of a living faith, at his home, about four miles northeast of Coal Creek, in Campbell County. Blessed be the memory of the just.
Burnett, J. J. Sketches of Tennessee’s Pioneer Baptist Preachers. Nashville: Press of Marshall & Bruce Company, 1919, pp. 332-333.
[Transcribed by Stephanie A. Hill from a photocopy of the original in the genealogy vertical files of the Lake City Library.]