William Phillips, Sr.

Biography

Phillips was a son of Samuel Phillips, pastor of the South Church in Andover, and was a descendant of George Phillips of Watertown, the progenitor of the New England Phillips family in America.

Unlike his brothers, Phillips did not attend Harvard College, instead embarking on a career in the merchant trade, working in the warehouse of merchant Edward Bromfield. He eventually became Bromfield's business partner and married his daughter Abigail in 1744.

In the 1760s Phillips became active in Boston politics, serving as a town selectman starting in 1767. He served on committees established to organize opposition to unpopular British policies, including one to organize agreement to and enforcement of a ban on the importation of goods from Britain subject to taxes imposed by the Townshend Acts. He was also on a committee headed by Samuel Adams and John Hancock to deal with the aftermath of the Boston Massacre in 1770. In 1772, he was elected to the provincial assembly along with Adams, Hancock, and Thomas Cushing. Governor Thomas Gage rejected his election to the governor's council in 1774. That same year, he sat on a committee established to determine who would need assistance when the Port of Boston was closed by Gage's implementation of the Boston Port Act.

When the American Revolutionary War broke out in 1775, Phillips relocated his family from occupied Boston to Norwich, Connecticut, where they lived in the childhood home of Benedict Arnold. He sat on the 1779-1780 convention that drafted the Massachusetts State Constitution and in the state convention that ratified the United States Constitution. He then served as a state representative and senator during the 1780s.