Phillips, Whipple Van Buren

   (1833–1904)

   HPL’s maternal grandfather; son of Capt. Jeremiah Phillips (1800–1848) and Robie Rathbun (1797– 1848). He was educated in Foster, R.I., and the East Greenwich Academy. He spent 1852–53 in Delavan, Ill. (a temperance town), on the farm of his uncle, James Phillips (1794–1878). He married Robie Alzada Place on January 27, 1856. They had five children: Lillian Delora (Phillips) Clark, Sarah Susan Phillips Lovecraft, Emeline Estella (1859–1866), Edwin Everett, and Annie Emeline (Phillips) Gamwell. Whipple moved the family to Coffin’s Corner, R.I., around 1859; he quickly made a fortune from real estate and other business and was able to purchase all the land in the town, which he named Greene after the Rhode Island Revolutionary War hero Nathanael Greene. He served as postmaster at Greene (1860–66) and as representative for Coventry in the Rhode Island General Assembly (1870–72). He joined the Masonic order and built a Masonic hall in Greene. Whipple suffered a financial collapse in 1870, but recovered sufficiently to move to Providence in 1874; after residing for some years at 276 Broadway on the West Side, he built a large house at 194 (later numbered 454) Angell Street in 1881. He went to the Paris Exposition in 1878 and traveled widely around the Continent, especially to Italy. In 1884 he formed the Snake River Company to pursue land interests in Idaho; he also named the town of Grand View, building a large Grand View hotel there. In 1889 he formed the Owyhee Land and Irrigation Company. Its chief object was the building of a dam over the Bruneau River (not the Snake River, as HPL notes in his letters), but it was washed away in 1890; although later rebuilt, the expense of building and maintaining the dam and other properties contributed to the collapse of the company in 1901. An irrigation ditch was washed out in 1904; a few days later, Whipple suffered a cerebral hemorrhage and died on March 28. Subsequent mismanagement of his estate caused HPL and his mother to move from 454 Angell Street to 598 Angell Street. His estate was valued at $25,000, of which $5,000 went to Sarah Susan and $2,500 to HPL. Whipple Phillips wrote to HPL sporadically from Idaho and told him oral weird tales in the Gothic mode. He proved to be an admirable replacement for HPL’s stricken father. His death, and the removal from 454 Angell Street, impelled HPL to give serious consideration to suicide (see SL4.358–59).

   See Kenneth W.Faig, Jr., “Whipple V.Phillips and the Owyhee Land and Irrigation Company,” Owyhee Outpost No. 19 (May 1988): 21–30.