Spencer Phillips, Rapides Parish, Louisiana
Submitted by Mike Miller

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Spencer Phillips, a Louisiana school man, is now in the thirteenth year of his 
consecutive service as principal of the schools at Pelican in De Soto Parish.  
His service is notable not only for the length but for the very unusual scope 
of achievement and progress credited to the schools during his administration.

Mr. Phillips was born at Glenmora, in Rapides Parish, Louisiana, June 6, l887, 
son of Ben and Ida (Calhoun) Phillips.  His father, who died in 1898 at the age 
of thirty-four, was a ~on of Professor John Bunyan Phillips, who came from Hinds 
County, Mississippi, and was a teacher in the old Spring Creek College, then an 
important source of educational advantages to Louisiana's youth, but now an 
institution almost forgotten.  John B. Phillips died while a soldier in the 
Confederate army.  Ben Phillips was a member of the Baptist Church and Masonic 
Fraternity.  He was the father of four sons and two daughters: Spencer; Frank, 
secretary of the Highway Department of Rapides Parish and a resident of Alexandria; 
Bolton, shipping clerk with a planing mill; Leon, a merchant and accountant for a 
hardwood mill at Glenmora; Katie, wife of Dr. Love. of De Ridder, Louisiana; and 
Miss Vera, of Meridian, Louisiana.

Spencer Phillips was reared in Glenmora, attended the local schools there, and 
during his early youth, worked in sawmills and as a carpenter.  Using these 
mechanical trades largely to give him his higher education.  He taught a one-room 
school near Forest Hill when nineteen years of age.  He worked his way through 
the State Normal College, teaching his second school at Hineston and his third 
school at Elmer.  He graduated from the Louisiana State Normal College in 1912, 
and since then has Spent a summer in study at the University of Chicago and two 
summers at the Louisiana State University.  In 1912 he took up his duties as 
principal of the Pelican schools.  At that time he had a staff of six teachers, 
while there are now thirteen teachers.  The high school offers three courses: The 
literary, the manual training and the home economics.  Mr. Phillips has also done 
much to encourage wholesome athletics, and is particularly interested in the school 
baseball nine, and also plays on the town team.  He played football in Normal College.

He married Miss Annie Miles, daughter of C. S. Miles, of Alexandria.  She was educated 
in the State Normal College and was a teacher at Glenmora.  Their three children are: 
Annie, Elliott and Ben.  Mrs. Phillips is a member of the Christian Church.  He has 
taught a class in Sunday School, and in Masonry is master of Pelican Lodge, belongs 
to the Royal Arch Chapter at Mansfield and has taken the fourteenth degree in the 
Scottish Rite at Shreveport.

A History of Louisiana, (vol. 2), p. 371, by Henry E. Chambers.  Published by The 
American Historical Society, Inc., Chicago and New York, 1925.