John Phillips, Settler of Dedham, Maine and his descendants

'My 3rd great-grandfather, John Phillips stands out as one of my ancestors to whom there still exists a thin, living, thread. Phillips' great-granddaughter, Laura, was my mother’s grandmother and my mother is still alive, though 100 years old. As she recounts fragments of her family history, it is clear that the Phillips played a major role in her childhood concept of who she is.

It is unlikely John Phillips saw such military action in the battle of Lexington and Concord but, who knows? He was there after all.

*​John Phillips (1747-1834) was descended from Nathaniel Phillips, who in 1636 left Britain to settle in  Dedham in the Massachusetts Bay Colony where he received 12 acres for planting. Four years later, he  became a freeman and a deacon of the church in Weymouth, Massachusetts.

The name of John Phillips was first recorded when he joined the colonial militia at his home in Bellingham, Massachusetts, at age 28, A private under the command of Captain Jesse Holbrook, he left his wife and two-year-old son to march 50 miles to Lexington on April 19, 1775  to stop the advance of British troops. For the next year and a half he served in several companies* before he was discharged from service in Ticonderoga in December 1776.
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John returned to Bellingham and with his wife, Sarah Pond, had three more children over the next 12 years, the last one a daughter, Sarah Pond Phillips, in March of 1789.  The next year he was in Maine, a full ten years after the close of the Revolutionary War, propelled in part by the promise of a land grant for his military service. One report says the family stopped first in China, Maine but in 1790 census takers found the 43-year-old, John Phillips and six family members living in Eddington, a bustling frontier town on a bend in the Penobscot River settled by Col. Jonathan Eddy and 19 others through a land grant given in 1785. 

A bend in the Penobscot river.

​Early settlers traded with the Penobscot Indians who had long fished the Penobscot River near Eddington, they also fished and worked the land.
 
There is no indication where the Phillips first lived but eight years later the family had moved to the Brewer section of East Orrington. In 1803, son Nathan had married another Massachusetts native who had made her way to Maine, Rebecca Kentfield. 

Phillips Lake.

​After Nathan and Rebecca were married and she gave birth to the first three of ten children, Nathan Phillips visited a picturesque lake not far from Orrington and decided to settle there in 1810. When he returned a second time he found he was on the wrong side of the lake so he removed his clothing, tied it to the handle of an axe and swam across the lake. He built his first cabin near the shore, then built another on a hill, where he offered lodging and food to travelers at a spot known as half-way on the road to Ellsworth. Today the rustic inn has been replaced by a grander structure and is called the Lucerne Inn. 

The Lucerne Inn in Dedham, Maine.

​Many members of the family, including John and Nathan, and their wives, are buried in Pine Tree Cemetery, just a stone’s throw from the lake. 

The census of 1830 lists three Phillips family households -- under John, John Jr. and Nathan -- living as residents of Otis, Maine, then a part of Dedham territory.  In 1834, John Phillips died but Nathan and other family members remained in Dedham.
 
Nathan’s son and my direct ancestor Richard (Rich) Phillips married Phoebe Cowing on March 2, 1843.  Phoebe was the granddaughter of another Revolutionary War veteran, Calvin Cowing, one of thousands of militia men who took part in one of the country's biggest naval debacles, the Penobscot Expedition.  (Compare the ignoble end of Calvin Cowing’s military career to the defeat of one of his ancestors by Cromwell's army in the last battle of the English civil war.)

The Americans lost 470 soldiers and all but one of its ships to the British in the Penobscot Expedition.

The graves of Phoebe Cowing Phillips' parents, Martha and Thomas Cowing in Dedham, Maine.

Rich Phillips and Phoebe Cowing gave birth to eleven children in Dedham, the youngest of them, Laura Adams Phillips, was born in 1860, when Phoebe was 42 years old.  By 1870, Rich and Phoebe had settled in Surry, on the far side of the county seat of Ellsworth.  Phoebe died at age 75, according to her death certificate, the cause was “old age.” 

Laura grew up in Surry and became my great grandmother after marrying Herbert Henry Eldridge, of Orrington, who we will learn about in another post. Laura gave birth to four children including my grandmother and her twin sister, Mattie and Minnie Eldridge, but died in her forties and was spoken of in reverent terms ever since.​

My grandmother, Mattie Belle Eldridge Reilly, was born in 1883 in Surry, Maine.

Addendum
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John Phillips was attached to the following Continental Companies in Massachusetts for varying amounts of time:

1. Private in Capt. Jesse Holbrook's company of militia, which marched on the alarm of 19 April 1775; service: 4 days. Also, he served in Capt. Samuel Cobb's company, Col. Joseph Reed's regiment, muster roll dated Roxbury camp, 26 Sept. 1775.
2. A Company, commanded by Captain Samuel Cobb, in Colonel Joseph Reed's Regiment: 8 months he served as a Private
3. Captain Sabin Mann's Company (Medfield): 3 months he served as a Sergeant
4. Captain Samuel Cowell's Company, in Colonel Joseph Reed's Regiment: 3 months he served as a Sergeant, muster roll dated Roxbury camp, 26 Sept. 1775. An order for a bounty coat for him or its equivalent in money is dated 6 Nov 1775.
5. Captain Joseph Daniels' Company in a Colonel Wheelock's Regiment: 5 months he served as an Orderly Sargeant as they marched on Fort Ticonderoga from August 18 until November 26, 1776.

After 19 months of service, Orderly Sergeant Phillips was discharged from the service at Ticonderoga in December 1776. Quoting from his Pension file, probably written in 1824, Mr. Phillips says "I am by occupation a farmer and unable to labour without family or friends, able to contribute to my support. My family, who lives with me consists of my wife, Sarah Phillips, aged seventy-four years, and unable to labour." The Phillips' home, during the Revolutionary War, was Bellingham, Norfolk County, Massachusetts.