An H. P. Lovecraft Encyclopedia

HPL’s maternal uncle; the only son of Whipple V.Phillips and Robie A.Place Phillips. He was associated with Whipple in the Snake River Co. and the Owyhee Land and Irrigation Co. in the 1890s. He married Martha Helen Mathews on July 30, 1894, divorced her, and remarried her on March 23, 1903. He was variously employed as rent collector, real estate agent, operator of the Edwin E.Phillips Refrigeration Co., etc. According to HPL, he “lost a lot of dough for my mother and me in 1911” ( SL3.367). HPL never mentions his uncle’s death in any surviving correspondence, leading one to suspect that he was not close to him.

Phillips Family.

HPL was descended from Asaph Phillips (1764–1829) and his wife Esther Phillips (1767–1842). HPL visited the site of their homestead on Howard Hill in Foster, R.I., in 1929. Asaph’s descent from Michael Phillips (d. 1686), Newport freeman of 1668, is not proven but is given by Henry Byron Phillips in his Phillips genealogy at the California State Genealogical Society. HPL’s late claim that Michael was the youngest son of the Rev. George Phillips (d. 1644), a 1630 emigrant who became minister of Watertown, Mass., is unsupported by any authority and almost certainly specious. Asaph and Esther had eight children, the youngest of whom was Captain Jeremiah Phillips (1800–1848), who married Robie Rathbun (1797–1848) in 1823. During the 1820s Jeremiah served in the militia. His political persuasions can be inferred not only from his profession and background but from the fact that he gave his son Whipple (1833–1904) the middle name Van Buren in honor of Martin Van Buren, who had been inaugurated as Andrew Jackson’s vice president on March 4, 1833. Jeremiah purchased the Isaac Blanchard grist mill on the Moosup River in 1833 and was tragically crushed to death when his long coat accidentally got caught in its gearing. Their mother Robie having died the previous July, the four surviving children (two sons and two daughters) were left as orphans. One of these, Whipple V.Phillips,

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was HPL’s grandfather. HPL also had some contact with his grand-uncle, James Wheaton Phillips (1830–1901).

See Kenneth W.Faig, Jr., Some of the Descendants of Asaph Phillips and Esther Whipple of Foster, Rhode Island(Glendale, Ill.: Moshassuck Press, 1993).

Phillips, James Wheaton (1830–1901).

HPL’s grand-uncle; elder brother of Whipple V.Phillips. He married Jane Ann Place on November 6, 1853. He owned a farm on Johnson Road in Foster, R.I., where HPL and his mother stayed for two weeks in 1896 and again in 1908. HPL and Annie Gamwell visited the site in October 1926. Phillips, Robie Alzada (1827–1896).

HPL’s maternal grandmother; wife of Whipple V.Phillips, whom she married on January 27, 1856. They had five children (see entry for Whipple Van Buren Phillips below). Her death and subsequent mourning by the family terrified young HPL and inspired dreams of “night-gaunts,” which he would much later use in fiction (e.g., The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath[1926–27], the “Night-Gaunts” sonnet of Fungi from Yuggoth[1929–30], etc.). Her collection of astronomy books served as the nucleus of HPL’s own collection after he became interested in the science in late 1902. HPL spells her name as “Rhoby,” but her tombstone (at Swan Point Cemetery in Providence) gives her name as “Robie.”

Phillips, Ward.

In “Through the Gates of the Silver Key,” an old man from Providence, R.I., and a correspondent of Randolph Carter who argues against the dispersal of Carter’s estate because he believes him to be still alive. Although not so identified in “The Silver Key,” he is the first-person narrator of that story. “Ward Phillips” was a pseudonym that HPL used for various of his poems as published in amateur journals.

Phillips, Whipple Van Buren (1833–1904).