Noted Pioneer Families
The pioneer settlers of Crittenden County mostly came to this section from 1795 to 1806. The majority of them came from Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina and Tennessee. Here is a short history of the Phillips Family, just one group of our noted families. (They still have many, many descendants living in Crittenden County even today.)
The Phillips family of Crittenden County are from pioneers who came within its borders in 1806. They are descended from Robert Philips, who was born in Ireland, and his wife Jane Edgar, a native of Scotland. They were married either in Ireland or Scotland and emigrated from there to North Carolina. Their son, John, was born on the voyage across the Atlantic, August 12, 1769.
The family located in Mecklenburg, N. C., near Charlotte. There John Phillips grew to maturity and married Mary Stewart. The became the parents of five sons, viz: William E., Thomas Stewart, Samuel H., John Tate, and George H. The birth dates of these five sons range from December, 1790, to November, 1801.
Mary Steward died in Mecklenbureg County prior to 1806, for in March of that year John Phillips and his five motherless sons started from North Carolina to what is now Crittenden County. Here he later, (Feb. 8, 1809) married a widow, Mrs. Jane Morrow Black, and to that union were born Robert Black Phillips, Maxwell Pope Phillips, Mary Stewart Phillips and Daniel Brown Phillips.
Starting in March of 1806, in addition to the Phillips family, the group of pioneers included the families of Ezekiel and Samuel Porter, and possibly others. En-route they fell in with the Hodge and Coleman families who also came to the same locality.
The route was across the Blue Ridge and the Cumberland Mountains. At that early date the roads were little more than trails and there were no bridges over streams so that slow progress was made and many hardships endured. Indians still occupied part of the country traversed but gave no trouble to the travelers. The caravan reached what is now Crittenden County in early May of 1806.
John Phillips and his sons made a crop that year on a place subsequently known as the Drury Allen farm, near Tribune. Later they moved to where the Garland Carter and Peter C. Stephens farms were developed spending about three years there.
About 1810 they moved to land on Piney Creek near Deanwood, the farm afterward known as the Ephraim Hill place. They spent perhaps twelve or fourteen years on that farm, till most of the sons were grown up. Later part of the family moved to land along Hood's Creek near to Nunn's Switch. John Phillips is probably buried at the family cemetery on land where his sons resided. Three of his sons for many years occupied farms in that immediate locality.
John Tate Phillips, (son of John and Mary Stewart Phillips), who furnished the information on which these notes are written said that when they came into this locality in 1806 there was only one road official established, the Flynn's Ferry Road from Princeton to what is now Weston. It became a pioneer road for emigrants going to Illinois and Missouri. Farms were yet very few and small.
Among the families in this locality about that period he named those of "Squire" Miller, the Travises, Nunns, Prices, Clarks, Cains, Stewarts, Truitts, Walkers and also one branch of the Hughes family.
Mr. Phillips also made mention of early religious activities at Piney Fork where he was converted and united with the church in August 1820, during one of the camp meetings for which that sacred spot was long so justly famous.
The above has been written with the joint purpose of giving some pioneer history and of awakening the descendants of those pioneers to an interest in gathering up and preserving information about their worthy forbears.
I have not known finer people in any locality than were many of them, "The Salt of The Earth."
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The family of Maxwell Pope Phillips. By ages of some of the children in the picture, it must have been made in the latter part of 1869.
Back row: 1. Maxwell Pope "Mack" Phillips, 2. William Edgar Phillips (son), 3. John Thomas Phillips (son), 4. William Daniel Shaw (nephew), 5. John Mack Phillips (nephew), 6. John Lamb (son-in-law), 7. William Joel Hill (son-in-law)
Front row: 8. Richard Black "Dick" Phillips (son), 9. Robert Gustavus "Gus" Phillips (son), 10. Eva (Shaw) Phillips (Mack's wife), 11. Ellen (Walker) Phillips (dau-in-law), married to William Edgar, 12. Sarah Ann Shaw (niece), 13. Margaret Shaw (niece), 14. Maria Phillips (daughter), 15 .Polly Jane (Phillips) Hill, daughter, married to William Joel Hill, 16. Mack Hill, (born Jan. 1869) in lap of his mother, Polly Jane, 17. Sarah Ann (Phillips) Lamb, daughter, married to John Lamb, 18. Isabelle "Belle" Phillips (daughter), 19. Evalina "Lina" Phillips (daughter).
John Phillips, (1767-1851), of this noted family is buried in the cemetery known at the McKinley-Phillips Cemetery located in the Nunn Switch community. The cemetery is located on top of a bluff that looked over the old railroad track. Several members of this Phillips family are buried there. John Tate Phillips, that wrote the above notes on his family, died sometimes in the 1870's and although they has no tombstone, it is thought that he and his wife, Nancy Walker Phillips, are buried here.
This little family cemetery had laid untouched for many years and had gotten quite overgrown. In the spring of 2001, a family clean-up day, spear-headed by the late Debbie Phillips Rogers, and joined by other members of the Phillips family, cleaned up this cemetery and also had a chain-link fenced set to enclose the site. Although I haven't been back since this time it's hoped this historic cemetery is still in good condition.
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