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The four Phillips sisters were the daughters of Dinah Barnard (d. 1844) and Mahlon Phillips (d. 1844). The sisters, Edith Bennett, Philena, Hannah, and Sarah Grace, called Sallie or Sally, were four of eleven children, raised in Kennett Square, Pennsylvania. They had five brothers, Joseph (1819-1877), John (1821-1877), James M. (1822-1890), and Cyrus, who died in his childhood (1834-1838). Additionally, the siblings had two more sisters, Rebecca (1824-1825) who died in infanthood, and Deborah (1829-1847), who died before the letters in this collection were written. The Phillips family belonged to the Progressive Society of Friends, were ardent abolitionists, and, according to family history, members of the underground railroad.
Edith Phillips was born in 1825. She attended Central College in McGrawville, New York, in 1850. This integrated college had been established the year before by abolitionist Free Baptists, and had at least two African-American professors, including William G. Allen whom Edith admired. In 1850 Edith survived a small pox epidemic that swept through the college. Two years later, Edith enrolled in Oberlin’s Preparatory Department, and then in the College from 1853 to 1854. While at Oberlin, she met William Warren Woodruff (A.B. 1854, A.M. 1860), whom she married on September 25, 1855. They had a son, William Warren Woodruff, Jr. (1860-1935), who was also an Oberlin student (1878-82 Preparatory, College). He married Jennie Finney, a granddaughter of President Charles G. Finney. Edith died in West Chester, Pennsylvania on November 11, 1864 at the age of 39.
Philena Phillips, born 1827, taught in 1847 at a small school in York Springs, Pennsylvania. Philena then enrolled in the Literary Course at Oberlin in 1852-1853, and in the College in 1853-55, but she did not graduate. She died on November 25, 1856 in West Chester, Pennsylvania, at the age of 29, of tuberculosis contracted when she was a student at Oberlin.
Hannah Phillips was born in 1831. She also taught school, although the record does not provide a location. She enrolled in Oberlin College from 1852 to 1854. She married J. Melancthon Frink, and died in Seattle, Washington on December 16, 1874 when she was 44 years old.
The youngest of the sisters, Sarah Grace (Sallie or Sally) Phillips, was born 1836. Sallie was enrolled in Oberlin’s Preparatory Department between 1852 and 1854. She died in Cottage Grove, Minnesota, on August 3, 1867, at the age of 31.
According to correspondence from the great-niece of the four Phillips sisters, Anna B. (Mrs. Jacob F.) Pratt, all the sisters eventually died of tuberculosis they had contracted at Oberlin. Many letters in the collection make reference to the precarious state of Philena’s health, and the treatments that she received for her failing health.
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