Charles F. Phillips was born in McMinn County, Tenn., November 27, 1830. He is the third of ten children born to William and Mahala (Davis) Phillips, who were of Irish and Welsh descent. William Phillips, his father, was a farmer, and was born in East Tennessee, where he was raised and married; when his son Charles was ten years old he moved to West Tennessee, and settled in Henderson County, remaining there eight years, and then removing to Carroll County, where he lived three years, dying in August, 1849. The mother was born in East Tennessee also, and died in Henderson County in 1846.
The subject of this sketch was raised on a farm and received a common school education. In 1855 he went into the family grocery business at Marlboro, Tenn., and continued the business until the war. March 4, 1853, he was married to Miss Cynthia A. Roberts, daughter of R. W. Roberts, a promising farmer and mechanic. Mr. Phillips had twelve children, eight of whom are living, and are named Rosalinda A. (Watkins), Mahala P. (Horn), John W., James M., Robert P., Edgar, Marina T. and Claude. The mother of the first five children above mentioned was born in Rutherford County, N.C., and immigrated to Tennessee with her parents at an early age, and died at the homestead November 24, 1874. Mr. Phillips was married the second time in Carroll County, February 27, 1876, to Mrs. Mary Martin, and from this marriage was one son, Edgar. Mrs. Martin was born in Carroll County, and died February 13, 1879. He was again married February 28, 1882, to his present wife, who was Miss Alice A. Cook, daughter of John Cook, of Nashville, Tenn. She was born June 27, 1849, and they were married in Nashville, February 28, 1882. Of this union were two children: Marina T. and Claude. Mr. Phillips is a stanch Republican, and takes pleasure in the success of his party.
He is a member of the Masonic fraternity, and his wife and himself are members of the Missionary Baptist Church; he is liberal in disposition, conservative in politics and upright in business and aids in all laudable enterprises, such as will benefit schools, churches and public and private charities. He has been in the mercantile business since 1868, always carrying a good stock of general merchandise. He has 750 acres of good land, eighty acres of which is in the home place at Hollow Rock, on the Nashville, Chattanooga & St. Louis Railroad, ten miles east of Huntingdon, Tenn. He devotes his farm to raising stock, and, to some extent, cotton, but gives chief attention to the cereals. The home place is nicely located, within a quarter of a mile of the station. The residence is commodious and comfortable, the location elevated and healthy, and with the convenient surroundings is one of the pleasant homes of the county.
Transcribed by David Donahue
Source: History of Tennessee from the Earliest Time to the Present: Together with an Historical and a Biographical Sketch of Carroll, Henry and Benton Counties, Besides a Valuable Fund of Notes, Original Observations, Reminiscences, Etc., Etc. Easley, S.C.: Southern Historical Press, 1978.