THE PHILLIPS FAMILY
Our record begins with Blaney Phillips, who was born in Pembroke Feb. 12, 1712; married, May 23, 1733, Christian Wadsworth, who was born Feb. 5, 1713; he died Dec. 21, 1800; she died Oct. 6, 1798; he was buried in that part of Pembroke, Plymouth county, which is now Hanson, where his headstone can be seen at any time. They had a family of nine children. There was a Rev. George Phillips who came to New England in the same fleet with Gov. Winthrop and was admitted as freeman in 1639, and it may be that Blaney was one of his descendants.
Of the nine children of Blaney (120-i.) and Christian, Seth (121-vi.), the third son and sixth child, born Sept. 25, 1749, married Betsey Hamlin (123) in 1775; she died Nov. 20, 1813; he died Aug. 8, 1828.
In 1775 Seth Phillips (121-vi.) bought a farm of 21-3/4 acres of land adjoining his father's property, for which he paid £95, 13s., 4d., lawful money. At the time of the war of the Revolution he lived in his native town of Pembroke, in Plymouth county. His home was in that part of Pembroke which is now Hanson. Soon after the close of the war he married and moved onto a farm in what is now called West Fitchburg.
His name is in the list of minute men as Sergeant Phillips. A partial copy of his record of the daily doings of the regiment, dated Feb. 18, 1776, also a list of the men of his company, are at present in Mrs. John Lowe's possession. May, 1776, he received from the Council of Massachusetts Bay the commission of second lieutenant, which now hangs in the relic room of the Wallace Library at Fitchburg. In July, 1780, he, with ten other Fitchburg men, enlisted in the Continental army for six months. He was discharged in December of the same year, making his term of service five months and ten days, for which he received £10, 13s., 4d., including travel for 200 miles. He was described as thirty years of age, five feet and eight inches in height, and light complexion. He died from an injury to his great toe, which caused mortification, at the home of his oldest daughter, Betsey (Phillips) Messinger, where he had been living for some years.
122-i. Betsey Phillips, daughter of Seth (121-vi.) and Betsey (Hamlin) (123-ii.) Phillips, was a great-grandmother of our family. She married, Jan. 1, 1801, Calvin Messinger, who lived only twelve short years after their marriage, and left his widow with five small children, of whom our grandmother, Louisa Adeline, was the oldest. She kept the old homestead and struggled bravely through the hardships of bringing up her little family, all of whom had to begin in early life to assist in the support of the whole, and all lived to old age except one son, Calvin, who died Oct. 8, 1825, about twenty years of age.
I used to enjoy grandmother telling me of her riding to church on horseback, on a pillion, behind her husband, in her sky-blue riding habit. She was a woman strong in every way, and won many friends. She became perfectly helpless for three years, and one evening quietly left us, at the age of eighty-five years. Her husband's father and also her own father died while living with her.
Source: The Ancestors of the John Lowe Family Circle and Their Descendants, By Ellen Maria Lowe Merriam, published by Sentinel Printing Co., 1901; Pgs. 110-111
