Re: Calvin Phillips NC SC 1823-1908 w Sally Richards son James Romeo dau Julia
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In reply to:
Calvin Phillips
James Parkhill 1/30/07
Julia Phillips is the sister of James Romeo Phillips (Sr.) although he was not called Sr. These two children are listed as the son and daughter of Calvin Phillips born 1823 in NC and Sally Richards born 1834 in SC. Julia and James Romeo were born in Gaffney, SC in Cherokee County but was at the time Spartanburg County. Julia Phillips was born 1859 and James Romeo was born 1855.
We found that information from Polk County NC where we believe the family moved and then both Julia and James Romeo were married and had their children. Julia was married to Rufus Waldrop from Rutherford County and James Romeo married Caroline A. Thompson.
So far we have not found out whether the Calvin Phillips that was their father is the same Calvin Phillips who went to the state to list a business with some business partners for a railroad equipment servicing company, but did find that in the state archives. We are also making a document on google docs with the information we have found.
Gaffney, SC at the time the Phillips were there, had an active Baptist community, Limestone Springs Girls High School (really a college for women, maybe the first), had been bought by the Southern Baptists from Rev. Curtis who took it from a resort to a girls college.
(from the historic markers page for SC)
South Carolina (Cherokee County), Gaffney — 11-3 — Limestone College
On Griffith Street at College Drive, on the left when traveling west on Griffith Street. Founded in 1845 as the Limestone Springs Female High School by Dr. Thomas Curtis and his son Dr. William Curtis, distinguished Baptist clergymen. http://www.hmdb.org/Results.asp?State=South+Carolina&StartAt=701&DP=.A.Phttp://www.hmdb.org/Results.asp?State=South+Carolina&StartAt=701&DP=.A.P
There was only a population of 400 when Gaffney was incorporated in the same year that Julia Phillips was married, 1875, but by that time, the family was apparently in Polk County, NC in White Oak Township, in Pea Ridge and areas nearby, including Mill Spring.
The 1860 census shows Calvin Phillips and Sally Richards in Spartanburg County with James Romeo and Julia Phillips, who was listed as two years old, although she was probably not quite two at the time. They were found on the 1880 census for Polk County NC with the spelling "Philups" showing both Calvin and lists Sarah Philups rather than Sally. We also found a number of Richards family in the census for Gaffney SC at the time Julia and James Romeo were born when they lived there, so maybe those were her relations. We haven't checked that yet.
My grandfather was Romeo Jefferson Phillips of SC. His father was Elijah Phillips, one of seven children of James Romeo Phillips and Caroline A. Thompson. Elijah Phillips is buried at Friendship Baptist Church, Lyman SC Spartanburg County on Holly Springs Rd. Many of our joint family members can be found in Polk County NC and in Baptist Church records there and also on the records compiled by a genealogist's database for Henderson NC (many of the county names and lines were changed over time in these areas). That info is found here - http://www.joecowart.com/Portals/1/Henderson/pafg2505.htmhttp://www.joecowart.com/Portals/1/Henderson/pafg2505.htm
By the way, there was also a Phillips who went as a delegate representative from the Gaffney area to the Southern Baptist Convention during the time of Calvin Phillips. We are still tracing it to see if it could've been a cousin, uncle, father or at all related because finding the Phillips family members before Calvin Phillips has been difficult. Strangely enough, the Phillips family motto turns up in some amazing places throughout America during those time periods and we discovered also that the one of the memorial stones for the Washington Monument was quarried from Gaffney at the same time period by a young man with the last name of Byars - which have a lot of family members in Polk County during the time Calvin Phillips and Sally (Richards) Phillips moved there. The newspaper article about it is online and is very interesting if nothing else. The Phillips family motto is also carved into the marble over the back entrance to the Union Club in Philadelphia.
By following the line of Elijah Phillips backwards through his parents link on the webpage listed above, the Julia Phillips and Rufus Waldrop family can be found as well. There is a bit more to the generation of my grandfather than the site has listed. My Dad filled in the names of Romeo Jefferson's brothers and sisters for me and the site only lists three. We also discovered that most of the members of our family probably came from the seaport of Charleston up into the NC and SC area - rather than from across the state of NC, but we haven't been able to find where Calvin Phillips was born, if he had any other children considering he was 27 years old when James Romeo was born and how or why they came to Gaffney SC in the first place - or why they moved to Polk County specifically thereafter. We also found a Calvin Phillips who served in the 2nd Beat, 37th Regiment of the SC Militia which is likely the same, but we haven't confirmed it yet.
There is a lot more, but our interest continues to be about the history at the same time as our study of the family. We discovered iron works in Gaffney, rivers / roads traveled and a number of land grants along the Pacolet River, Thickety Creek and Broad River in the Phillips family name. We found a Samuel Phillips that served as a Patriot with the Overmountain Men and was captured then released to tell the Patriot forces to lay down their arms or be walked over by the British before the Battle of Kings Mountain. We also found that a Captain James Phillips and a Colonel John Phillips and son of Capt. James Phillips, Robert - served the British forces during the Revolutionary War with land granted to Capt. James Phillips along the Broad River near Thickety Creek in the same area. His son stayed in the states somewhere and Capt. James Phillips acted as a surveyor for a number of years after the war before going back to England / Ireland, County Antrim. We don't know if any of these are related to our family, but they certainly could be. In our family's oral history - at reunions many years ago, they told me our family served in the Revolutionary War and I don't think it ever occurred to me to ask them which side they were serving. It could be that we had people serving on both sides of it, as was true of many families.
However, the Ambrose Mills who was hanged at Biggerstaff's Farm after the Battle of King's Mountain was a British Loyalist and friend of Captain James Phillips. Ambrose Mills' Mill and Farm is at the crossroads where Mill Spring NC sits in Polk County. More about that can be found here - it is very interesting - maybe not related, maybe it might be - http://www.findagrave.com/cgi-bin/fg.cgi?page=gr&GRid=59106974http://www.findagrave.com/cgi-bin/fg.cgi?page=gr&GRid=59106974
This is where we found the story of Captain James Phillips - it is about page 60 in this journal of Alexander Chesney from the University of NC archives of historic papers -
http://www.archive.org/stream/journalofalexand00ches/journalofalexand00ches_djvu.txthttp://www.archive.org/stream/journalofalexand00ches/journalofalexand00ches_djvu.txt
That same Mill Spring area is where most of our families have resided during the generations between Julia Phillips and James Romeo Phillips with their children and where Calvin with Sally moved. Until the generation of my grandfather, who lived in Lyman, Duncan, Greer, Inman, Startex area of SC - most of our family was located in Polk County, NC.
We found that at one time there was an old SC State Road which started at Charleston, went near or through Gaffney and all the way to just above Polk County, NC. It is on old maps https://wiki.familysearch.org/en/Old_South_Carolina_State_Road
and on the historic markers site for SC - the listings for Gaffney and other documents, said there were several Fords in the area, including Grindal Shoals, and Smiths Ford on the Broad River. It appears that some of the rivers were navigable for at least portions of them, wagon travel was by road from Charleston and there was also a road called the Great Wagon Road or Great Valley Road coming from Philadelphia all the way to the same areas of NC. Trains in these areas did not come into place until around 1870 more or less with several short lines placed at the time to convince legislators it was worth doing. The South Carolina Air Line Railroad was established in 1870 - The Asheville-Spartanburg Railroad was established in 1881 and the line ran through Greer SC in 1873. At one point before that there were plank roads devised to go through the mountains and for some of the wagon roads. Atlanta-Richmond Air Line Railroad went through Gaffney and Saluda - it was created in 1877 and the cities along its route can be found here -
http://www.carolana.com/SC/Transportation/railroads/sc_rrs_atlanta_charlotte_air_line.htmlhttp://www.carolana.com/SC/Transportation/railroads/sc_rrs_atlanta_charlotte_air_line.html
Also - a number of the churches where Phillips family members were participants can be found in this page titled - Sketches of the Churches of the Broad River Association
http://baptisthistoryhomepage.com/nc.broad.rvr.church.hists.htmlhttp://baptisthistoryhomepage.com/nc.broad.rvr.church.hists.html
And this was the document from the Forty-First Anniversary of the State Convention July 26 - 28, 1861 held in Spartanburg, SC (which has a W. Phillips and a J. Phillips listed among its proceedings. J. Phillips listed on income account for a bond under the treasurer's report). There is also a G.W. Philips listed in it. Anyway, as active as the Phillips family has been in the Baptist churches, these may be related to us - certainly the J. Phillips possibly is.
http://docsouth.unc.edu/imls/scbaptist/baptist.htmlhttp://docsouth.unc.edu/imls/scbaptist/baptist.html
The other thing we found is that as the DNA project surmises, there are a lot of Phillips lines that come from a variety of places. And, although the first use of the name Phillips as a surname does indeed derive from the Wales area of Pembrokeshire and Carmarthen predating the Roman occupation of the area (which gave people in the area Roman citizenship out of negotiated deals with them), finding the lineage between the two actually exceeds the limits of the current DNA project testing methods. Which means it is possible that all of these Phillips' here, there and yonder, may have indeed some common lineage among them going back to that time. But, the DNA project explains there 600 year limit for the manner in which they are deriving family grouping results. And, it may be also true, that people could've, by the necessity of the moment, adopted the Phillips surname which were in no other way related to any of us. However, there are many interesting cultural notes that describe our family which appear in many other places with surnames of Phillips, such as in having a propensity toward business and establishing businesses in order to derive an income to support the family's needs. And, being rather mechanically, inventive and engineering inclined. Some of the attitudes within our family about the personal responsibility to be educated, even to educate oneself - to pursue intellectual and learned status in things with an underlying conscience about it and about how we use it to the betterment of mankind and some greater good for our community and those around us - could have come from the principles of the Baptist Church. However, it does seem to go with the family name hand in hand - whether the member of our family was a surveyor, a professor of higher mathematics, an inventor, a steamship line owner or just running a grocery store and finding ways to make fresh produce available to nearby communities during times of rationing and scarce goods. It seems there is a very practical side to it all that meets the needs found in the world at large and the immediate community and our family members have sought to meet those needs with a level of responsibility and conscientiousness which does not seem to be as common as we first thought when we began studying our family's history. Personally, I believe it is something within our family that drives us and is handed down between us from generation to generation, but regardless of whether a family line is related to us or not - that has the name Phillips - they seem to have that too. And, that has been the most interesting find of all.
One other thing real quick - Sons were named commonly after the father's father, or to honor the grandfather. Second sons were often named to honor the wife's father and often daughters were names to honor a sister, a mother or grandmother or even an aunt. We are hoping that Calvin Phillips may have a father named James from NC and can find where he was born and when the family came to America. Our guess is that Calvin's father would've been born around 1804, more or less and then his grandfather would've been born around twenty years or so before that. So we are scouring the areas of NC which were inhabited at the time to see where the links are. James Romeo Phillips married Caroline A. Thompson whose family comes from the area of NC in the foothills of the Smoky Mountains and their line traces back to before the Revolutionary War as well. It still seems odd that the Phillips family of Calvin and Sally would've moved to that area - unless they knew some people there or had relatives in the area, so we are checking into that too.
I hope these things will be of some help. Sorry to have been so long-winded. We are trying to make something of a timeline with the family history that we've found and will post it or send it along to you, if you want, once we get it a little better constructed. There were also several Phillips family groups we found on the passenger lists of ships coming into America from the colonies through around 1868 but we haven't been able to tell if they are connected to our family line yet.
More Replies:
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Re: Calvin Phillips NC SC 1823-1908 w Sally Richards son James Romeo dau Julia
Nancy Kiser 8/05/11
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Re: Calvin Phillips NC SC 1823-1908 w Sally Richards son James Romeo dau Julia
Diane Phillips 8/07/11
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Re: Calvin Phillips NC SC 1823-1908 w Sally Richards son James Romeo dau Julia
Nancy Kiser 8/08/11
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Re: Calvin Phillips NC SC 1823-1908 w Sally Richards son James Romeo dau Julia
Doyle Phillips 8/08/11
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Re: Calvin Phillips NC SC 1823-1908 w Sally Richards son James Romeo dau Julia
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Re: Calvin Phillips NC SC 1823-1908 w Sally Richards son James Romeo dau Julia
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Re: Calvin Phillips NC SC 1823-1908 w Sally Richards son James Romeo dau Julia
James Parkhill 8/05/11