♂William Bennett Phipps

William Bennett Phipps (about 1827 – 9 March 1898) was an upholsterer from Stratford-upon-Avon, Warwickshire, the son of an upholsterer, who served in the Confederate army as a substitute, a private in the 44th North Carolina Infantry, and afterwards lived in Chicago, Illinois. He was the great-grandfather of Frederic Roger Curtis (1928–2007): his daughter Emily Josephine Phipps (1868–1919) married Hubert Orestes Curtis, and their son Frederic Arthur Curtis (1903–1990) was Roger’s father.

Early life

He was baptized at Stratford-upon-Avon on 28 May 1827, the eldest of the three known children of John Phipps and Elizabeth Bennett, and he carried his mother’s maiden surname as his middle name. His parents had married at Stratford fifteen months earlier, on 28 February 1826, both described in the register as of that parish. They married by licence rather than by banns, and one of the two witnesses was a Mary Bennett. In the sworn statement he made to obtain the licence, John Phipps described himself as a cabinet-maker; at William’s baptism the register gave his trade as upholsterer. Later American records imply a birth year of 1828, and his Confederate enlistment one of about 1825; the baptism register shows 1827.

Two more children, John and Elizabeth, were baptized at Stratford on the same day, 16 April 1834, seven years after his own baptism. The register again gave the father’s trade as upholsterer, and it does not say whether the two were twins. Their mother was buried at Stratford on 29 May 1837, aged thirty-two, when William was ten.

The records do not say when or why William left England. He followed his father’s trade: the United States census recorded him as an upholsterer at Greenville, North Carolina, in 1860 and at Chicago in 1870 and 1880.

Emigration and North Carolina

A passenger index lists a William Phipps, aged 22, an upholsterer, arriving at New York from London on the ship Devonshire on 20 March 1849; whether the entry is his is not established. In a letter of April 1865 he stated that he had taken the oath of allegiance to the United States on 8 October 1856 in the county court of Kings County at Brooklyn, New York, and the court’s index card of his naturalization gives the same court and date. The residence requirement of the time implies that he had reached the United States by about 1851.

In 1856 he was living in Brooklyn and working as an upholsterer at 266 Court Street, in partnership as Oliver & Phipps. A classified heading also lists him in the paper-hangings trade, with a home at 139 Fulton Street, but that listing may belong to an earlier volume (see Notes). The 1860 census records him at Greenville, Pitt County, North Carolina.

Civil War service

On 24 June 1862, aged 37, he enlisted at Pitt County in Company C of the 44th North Carolina Infantry as a substitute for another man. Under the Confederate conscription law of 1862 a drafted man could hire a substitute to serve in his place, usually for a large sum, and foreign-born men who were not themselves liable to the draft were a common source of substitutes. He was carried as a private on every muster roll from April 1862 to October 1864. He was captured near Petersburg, Virginia, on 2 April 1865, the day the Confederate lines there broke, was sent by way of City Point to the prisoner-of-war camp at Point Lookout, Maryland, arriving on 4 April, and was released on 16 June 1865 on taking the oath of allegiance. The oath card describes him as of light complexion, grayish hair and dark eyes, five feet eight and three-quarter inches tall, resident at Greenville.

Chicago

He had moved to Chicago by the 1870 census, where he worked as an upholsterer. He and his wife Emily Eliza Morgan had three daughters, Lilian, Emily Josephine and Elizabeth. He registered to vote in 1892. He died on 9 March 1898 at his home, 2113 Archer Avenue, aged 70. His death notice in The Inter Ocean called him “Captain William B. Phipps” and a member of camp No. 8 of the United Confederate Veterans^W; his service record carries him as a private, so the title is the notice’s own and not a rank he is known to have held. The funeral was held on Friday 11 March 1898, and he was buried at Oak Woods Cemetery, Chicago.

Notes

Naturalization

Two statements of his own disagree. The 1892 voter register records his naturalization as 1852 at the court in Wilmington, North Carolina; his 1865 letter gives Brooklyn, 1856. The New Hanover County naturalization papers for those years contain no Phipps under any spelling. Beyond the index card, the Kings County record itself is not known. The court, the date and the form of the name under which he was admitted remain open.

The Brooklyn directory

The entry is dated 1856. The directory is titled for the year ending 1 May 1857, and its title page carries the imprint 1856. The alphabetical entries read “Phipps William B. upholsterer, 266 Court” and “Oliver & Phipps, upholsterers, 266 Court”. The classified heading reads “Phipps William B., paperhangings, 266 Court and 139 Fulton, h. 139 Fulton”, and the year of that classified listing is not settled; it may belong to the volume for 1855–56.

After his mother’s death

A widower named John Phipps married Mary Grafton at Stratford in November 1838, but at least two other men of that name had families in and around the town in these years, and the groom’s trade is not known, so it cannot be said whether he was William’s father. Neither William nor his father appears at Stratford in the 1841 census index.

Rank

A memorial index gives his rank as sergeant; that rests on a single informal entry in the prisoner-of-war remarks, against eight formal entries of private.