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In 1876 Henry Phillips was ordained to the priesthood at Holy Trinity Church, where he had served as lay reader. 
Holy Trinity Church
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After his ordination Henry Phillips served for a little over a year at the Church of St Thomas, near 5th and Walnut Streets. He describes it as an 'aristocratic' church, and DuBois said it represented 'the most cultured and wealthiest of the Negro population and the Philadelphia born residents'. He began his first service at the Church promptly at 10.30 am, only to be told by the organist afterwards that should have waited until she played a voluntary when there were enough people in the congregation for the service to start. Phillips said that his Fairfield training could not accept that, and the congregation happily accepted services that started on time thereafter. He only stayed at St Thomas for about 17 months, and was married in the Church in December 1875.
He had hoped to be able to go as a missionary to Liberia, or Haiti, but neither proved possible. He received offers of cures in the South, one in New Orleans, but he was not prepared to accept them. For a time he ran a school, which did well, but soon the opportunity turned up which decided his future. It was suggested to him that he should inquire about the possibility of becoming rector of the Church of the Crucifixion, the other 'Colored' Episcopal church in Philadelphia at the time. He was well-known to the 12 White members of the church vestry, as he had been a Sunday school teacher and lay-reader there while he was an ordinand. So he met with the rector's warden, who explained that the church owed money to the previous rector, and that there was no money to pay him; he immediately accepted the job, and remained at the Church of the Crucifixion as rector for 25 years.
In The Philadelphia Negro, W.E.B. DuBois wrote in 1899 of the Church of the Crucifixion and its rector: 'The oldest of the churches is St. Thomas. Next comes the Church of the Crucifixion, over fifty years old and perhaps the most effective church organization in the city for benevolent and rescue work. It has been built up virtually by one Negro, a man of sincerity and culture, and of peculiar energy. This church carries on regular church work at Bainbridge and Eighth and at two branch missions; it helps in the Fresh Air Fund, has an ice mission, a vacation school of thirty-five children, and a parish visitor. It makes an especial feature of good music with its vested choir. One or two courses of University Extension lectures are held here each year, and there is a large beneficial and insurance society in active operation, and a Home for the Homeless on Lombard street. This church especially reaches after a class of neglected poor whom the other colored churches shun or forget and for whom there is little fellowship in white churches.' |
Church of the Crucifixion
Parish Building
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The Church of the Crucifixion
A building near Eighth and Bainbridge Streets. It was built as things were done in those days - built in a very poor and unsatisfactory way. There was no cellar. Sills were placed on the ground. A small place dug out in front for the heater or apology for one. No windows in the sides. Six little ones in the roof. The place could never be well heated. I have often had to put my surplice over my overcoat. In summer it could be properly ventilated. I have often wondered why any one would come to such an uncomfortable place. Poverty was concentrated in the neighborhood as is not to be seen in any part of Philadelphia today. There were many open cesspools and often there was but one hydrant in a little space for three families. Where was water to come from when a hydrant froze? Many of the houses, originally built for a small family, had four families living in one house - a family in one room. The inside of such a house was always very dark. I often had to light my way by means of a match in climbing stairways to make visits. If I hadn’t a match I had to feel my way up stairways that apparently had never been cleaned.
A building near Eighth and Bainbridge Streets. It was built as things were done in those days - built in a very poor and unsatisfactory way. There was no cellar. Sills were placed on the ground. A small place dug out in front for the heater or apology for one. No windows in the sides. Six little ones in the roof. The place could never be well heated. I have often had to put my surplice over my overcoat. In summer it could be properly ventilated. I have often wondered why any one would come to such an uncomfortable place. Poverty was concentrated in the neighborhood as is not to be seen in any part of Philadelphia today. There were many open cesspools and often there was but one hydrant in a little space for three families. Where was water to come from when a hydrant froze? Many of the houses, originally built for a small family, had four families living in one house - a family in one room. The inside of such a house was always very dark. I often had to light my way by means of a match in climbing stairways to make visits. If I hadn’t a match I had to feel my way up stairways that apparently had never been cleaned.
[I have not had a great deal of success in finding material on Archdeacon Phillips after 1902, but as I find more information I will expand this page. I am very grateful to the archivists of the Episcopal Church in the USA, and of the Diocese of Pennsylvania, for the assistance they gave me which enabled me to get even this far! JL.]
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1894-8 George Alexander McGuire, later Chaplain General of the UNIA, worked with Phillips in Philadelphia
1897 Church of the Crucfixion, semi-centennial 1902 Appointed Archdeacon for Colored Work, Diocese of Pennsylvania Visit to West Indies 1905 Philadelphia Association for the Protection of Colored Women. Founder/President 1911 Visit to Jamaica 1912-4 Rector, Church of St Thomas, Philadelphia 1914 Gave funeral oration for William Carl Bolivar, Black Philadelphia journalist and bibliophile 1922 Visit to Jamaica 1938 91st birthday celebration 1947 Death (I have yet to find an obituary, or other details.) |
Archdeacon Phillips and his wife visited Jamaica on several occasions, certainly in 1902, 1911 and 1922, though little reference to their visits appears in the Daily Gleaner.
A Journey to the Promised Land: The Struggle of a Suburban Church to Build an Edifice. Mastine Nisbett, 2011.
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'Since early in the [eighteen] seventies Rev. Dr. Henry L. Phillips, a native of Jamaica, has been a resident of the city of Philadelphia. He has seen St. Thomas Church and the Church of the Crucifixion with a combined communicant list of about one hundred. A warm friend of Bishops Stevens and Whitaker, Drs. Matlack and Saul, and thoroughly and well known by all of the influential Churchmen of Philadelphia, he has constantly in diverse ways used his whole influence towards Church extension among the group in the diocese of Pennsylvania. In a true sense today he is the Archdeacon of the work begotten by himself.'
'When Archdeacon Henry Phillips, my last rector, died, I flatly refused again to join any church or sign any church creed.'
W.E.B. DuBois, The Autobiography of W.E.B. DuBois: A Soliloquy on Viewing My Life from the Last Decade of Its First Century, 1968.
W.E.B. DuBois, The Autobiography of W.E.B. DuBois: A Soliloquy on Viewing My Life from the Last Decade of Its First Century, 1968.
