BIOGRAPHY: Abi A. Phipps; Clockville, Madison co., NY

submitted by W. D. Samuelsen
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Biographical Review
The Leading Citizens of Madison County, New York
pub. 1894, Boston, Biographical Review Publishing Company

ABI A. PHIPPS, a retired farmer, living on his seven-acre farm in the village
of Clockville, upon which he has resided for the past twenty-six years, was
born in the town of Thompson, Windham County, Conn., in 1810. Like his
ancestors for many generations back, farming has been his occupation. Jason
Phipps, his grandfather, died in Connecticut in May, 1817, when nearly eighty-
two years of age. H. Phipps, the father of our subject, was born in the town
of Thompson, Conn., in August, 1768, and died in Oppenheim, Fulton County,
N.Y., in 1850, aged eighty-two. He was the third son of his parents, was a
well-to-do farmer, and was one of the five Selectmen who transacted the
business of his town. Besides being a farmer, he was a civil engineer and a
skilful surveyor, and stood so high in the estimation of his fellow-men that
they sent him to the Legislature and elected him a Justice of the Peace, in
which latter position he served more than twenty years, this office being then
of much more importance and dignity than it is at the present time. He was
also a conveyancer. In politics he was first a Federalist and then a Whig. He
married Betsy Cloyes, of Framingham, Mass., by whom he had nine children,
seven of whom grew to mature years and four of whom are still living. Of those
who have died. Paris M. died in February, 1848, aged forty-six; Elmer C., who
was a farmer at Oppenheim, died August 16, 1889, aged eighty-two; and Lewis
L., the youngest of the family, died at the age of twenty-one. D. H . Phipps,
one of those still living, is a well-preserved old man, eighty-six years of
age, living in Oneida, N.Y.

The boyhood of the subject of this sketch, and also his young manhood up to
the time he was twenty years of age, were spent upon his father's farm. He was
married first, when twenty-four years old, to Lydia Kibbie, daughter of Eldad
Kibbie, of Oppenheim. They had two children, a son and daughter, the son dying
when about nineteen years of age, and the daughter being the wife of James G.
Messenger, living south of Peterboro, and having two sons and one daughter,
one of the sons being a college graduate, and now a student at the Buffalo
Medical College. The daughter was graduated at the age of nineteen, is a fine
scholar, and a teacher at Gloversville. The mother of these children died in
March, 1860, at the age of forty-nine; and Mr. Phipps was married the second
time to Diana Hess, who lived with him twenty years, and died at his present
home, April 3, 1880, aged fifty-seven. He was married the third time December
28, 1881, to M. Gena Parkell, of Clockville, daughter of John T. and Helen
Parkell, the former of whom is now in his ninetieth year, strong and healthy
for a man of that age, and the latter of whom died in April, 1888, aged eighty
years and six months. Mr. and Mrs. Phipps have buried one little girl, who
died at the age of five months; and they have two children living, - Alton A.,
in his seventh year, and Mary Alice, four years old. In politics Mr. Phipps is
a Republican, having previously been a Whig. He served as Supervisor of
Smithfield five years, and has served as Town Auditor four years in the town
of Lenox. Though he never studied law, he has a fine legal mind, and has, by
careful reading, gathered together a large fund of legal information; and, had
his thoughts been turned in that direction, he would certainly have succeeded.