William H. Lipsett was born on February 3, 1843, in Ohio to Edward Lipsett and Rachel M. Cowan. His father was an Irish immigrant and a farmer who owned $2,500 of real estate and $1,000 of personal property by 1860. The family lived in Ashland County, Ohio, and Lipsett attended school there. He enlisted in the Union army on February 3, 1862, and mustered in as a private in Company E of the 54^th Ohio Infantry later that day. The regiment took part in the Battles of Shiloh, Corinth, and Chickasaw Bayou. Lipsett eventually earned a promotion to corporal, and he may have mustered out sometime before July 1863. He and his brother Newell moved to Doyle, Iowa, sometime in the 1860s. By 1870, Lipsett was working as a farmer there, and he owned $3,000 of real estate and $750 of personal property. He married May Elvira Sheldon on March 27, 1872, and they had at least five children: Clarence, born around 1876; Eugene, born around 1879; Sheldon, born around 1883; Bertha, born around 1884; and Roy, born around 1895. The family moved to Lamont, Oklahoma, sometime between 1885 and 1895, and Lipsett died in Medford, Oklahoma, on May 19, 1906.

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