Update on NMRLS LSTA Grant "Enhancing Archival Access in Northeast Massachusetts" By Margherita M. Desy Curator/Site Manager, Stephen Phillips Trust House

The Stephen Phillips Trust House has been the fortunate recipient of a NMRLS grant that allowed the historic house museum to hire Laura Lowell as an archival consultant to work on the Phillips Family Archives. The Phillips House is a fascinating museum with collections covering nearly 250 years of Phillips family history and five major and five minor allied families of Salem and Essex County. The collections comprise furniture, fine and decorative arts, personal belongings, carriages and antique cars, books (both rare and secondary), and family and non-family papers. The first-ever inventory of the varied collections was undertaken in 1999-2000 and from that investigation it was determined that there are at least 11,000 objects, over 3,000 books, and an unknown number of linear feet of archives.

Cataloguing of the objects progresses apace and the processed archival collections are growing, too. The Phillips and allied families appear to have never thrown out a scrap of paper! Trunks, boxes, and drawers are full to bursting with letters, scrapbooks, postcards, official documents, diplomas, school papers, theatre tickets, opera programs - the list of archival material is endless! Prior to receiving funding from NMRLS in June 2005, a portion of the family papers had been gathered for another project.

Although the original goal of the grant had been to process the gathered correspondence and papers of Stephen Clarendon Phillips (1801-1857), a U.S. Congressional Representative and the second mayor of Salem, it quickly became apparent that his business papers were deeply intertwined with those of his father, China-trade merchant Capt. Stephen Phillips (1764-1838). Further examination also revealed mutual business operations in the shipping, railroad and timber industries with his son, Stephen Henry Phillips (1823-1897), who would later become attorney general for the Commonwealth of Massachusetts and the Kingdom of Hawaii.

With the help of the NMRLS funds, more papers were gathered and Laura and the Phillips House staff were able to create the Phillips Family Archives -- preserving, arranging and describing the personal and professional papers of three generations of this unique family. Among the most significant documents in the collection are a port clearance certificate signed by George Washington, letters to Stephen Clarendon Phillips from John Quincy Adams, Daniel Webster and Harriet Martineau, and correspondence between Stephen Henry Phillips and King Kamehameha V. The papers reveal the history of a prominent Salem, Massachusetts family through several generations as their interests and struggles mirror national and international events, wars (the War of 1812, the American Civil War, and World War I), reform movements (abolitionism and public school reform), and the economic panics of 1837 and 1873.

It is interesting to speculate why such an archive of papers survived so many generations, moves, and disasters, but there is strong indication that certain Phillips' were very aware of the family's place in local, national, and international history. The result is an un-tapped resource of rich documents detailing their daily life and times and access to first-hand accounts of significant moments in history. Without the assistance of the NMRLS grant, it is unlikely that the Phillips House would have had the time or money to process the collections on its own. Once the Phillips Family Archives is completed, a detailed finding aid and MARC record will enable researchers to locate and utilize this fascinating, previously inaccessible material.