Jackson-Williamson County IL Archives Biographies.....Phillips, William Harper 1846 - 
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Joy Fisher http://www.genrecords.net/emailregistry/vols/00001.html#0000031 October 19, 2008, 7:51 pm

Author: George Washington Smith (1912)

   WILLIAM HARPER PHILLIPS. During all of the last sixteen years William H.
Phillips has been a resident of Carbondale, and throughout that period has been
carrying on an extensive business which has been profitable to him and
beneficial to the city and its people. His enterprise has given employment to a
number of men, kept a considerable sum of money regularly in circulation in the
community and added materially to the mercantile and industrial activity and
importance of the place and a large extent of the surrounding country.

   Mr. Phillips has lived in several different places, and long enough in each
to make his merits known to the people and win their good opinion and esteem. He
was born in Clarksville, Mecklenburg county, Virginia, in July, 1846, and is a
son of Robert Allen and Caroline (Leneave) Phillips, who passed the major
portion of their lives in the Old Dominion, and their forefathers for many
generations had lived there. The father was a wagon maker and flourished at the
trade until the Civil war came and paralyzed every industry in the South. Even
during that awful conflict he was able to maintain his standing and keep his
head above water, difficult as it must have been at times. He and his wife
passed away in Kentucky, which state had been their home a few years prior to
their death.

   The son was educated at private schools, and by the time he was ready to
leave them and start a business career for himself the war was in full blast,
and he determined to join the Confederate army in defense of the political
theories in which he had been trained. He was not yet a man in age, but was one
in spirit and courage, and hesitated not a moment when he heard the voice of
duty ordering him to the field. He enlisted in Company A, Fifty-sixth Virginia
Infantry, and, youth as he was, was made second lieutenant of the company.

   His record in the war was like that of many thousands of other brave men on
both sides of the sanguinary sectional strife. "Whatever the danger before him,
he faced it without flinching; whatever the toil, hardship and privation, he
endured without complaining; whatever the final result, he did his whole duty
without shirking; and when the flag he followed so faithfully went down in
everlasting defeat at Appomattox, he accepted the disaster without repining. His
regiment took part in the battle of Bull Run and shared in its triumph. It also
participated in many subsequent engagements, victorious in some and defeated in
others. He was with it to the end of the war, and was mustered out of the
service in September, 1865, worn in body, wasted in wordly possessions, with no
employment immediately available to provide for his wants, but undaunted in
spirit, and still ready to encounter the worst that Fate might send him.

   When the army to which he belonged was reorganized in 1863 he was made
captain of his company; and in a subsequent reorganization was promoted to
major, but his commission for the latter rank never reached him. At the end of
his military service he returned to his Virginia home to begin again the
struggle for advancement among men, but found the conditions in his native state
altogether unpromising for a man without means, and likely to continue so for
many years. He therefore determined to seek better opportunities in a state
which had not been ground under the iron heel of war, and in 1869 left Virginia.
For a number of years he worked in various places at his trade of wagon making,
which he had learned under the tuition of his father. In 1875 he came to
Illinois and located at Carterville in Williamson county.

   There he wrought at manufacturing wagons for a time, then sold farming
machinery for some years. In 1885 he moved to Marion, the county seat, where he
remained ten years employed as he had been at Carterville. In 1893, beginning in
September, he took charge of the Scurlock estate for the purpose of winding up
its affairs. There was a business in the farm implement trade belonging to this
estate, and when he had the other affairs of the estate all settled and disposed
of he bought this business and its equipment and stock, and began to carry on
the enterprise himself. Subsequently he added furniture, hardware and builders'
supplies to his lines of commodities, and so enlarged his operations and
increased his business to considerable proportions. It is now located in a
two-story brick building of substantial construction, forty by one hundred and
thirty-two feet in dimensions.

   Wherever he has lived Mr. Phillips has taken a warm interest in public
affairs and done what he could to secure for the interests of his community
proper control and administration. He was for some years president of the board
of aldermen in Carterville, and served one term as alderman from the ward in
which he lived in Marion. In Carbondale he has performed all the duties of
citizenship in a manner very creditable to him and servicable to the city and
its inhabitants.

   On December 31, 1872, he was married to Miss Cannie Jones, of Cerulean
Springs, Trigg county, Kentucky, the daughter of a highly respected and
prosperous blacksmith of that place, Jefferson Jones. They have three children,
all of whom are living, but only one of them in this state. They are: Otis
Blakely, a partner of his father in the implement establishment; Maud, the wife
of J. F. Daniels, of Wichita, Kansas, a traveling salesman; and Grace, the wife
of Rush T. Lewis, who also lives in Wichita, Kansas, and is likewise a traveling
salesman. The father belongs to the Methodist Episcopal church and is a member
of the official board of his congregation. His fraternal connection is with the
Masonic order, of which he has long been a member.



Additional Comments:

Extracted from:

A HISTORY OF SOUTHERN ILLINOIS

A Narrative Account of its Historical Progress, its People, and its Principal
Interests

BY
George Washington Smith, M. A.
VOLUME II
ILLUSTRATED

THE LEWIS PUBLISHING COMPANY
CHICAGO AND NEW YORK 1912



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