When in 1870 he was candidate for governor of Massachusetts, on a
hopeless ticket, and was taunted with being ambitious, he proudly
replied, "Born of six generations of Yankees, I knew the way to office
and turned my back on it thirty years ago." His family was one of the
earliest and most generally respected in New England; and at one time
was influential and flourishing, but now nearly extinct. Rev. George
Phillips of Rainham in Norfolk, England, was a graduate of Cambridge
University, and entered the Church of England, but soon became a
dissenter, and embarked with Governor Winthrop on the ship Arabella, in
1630, for the western world. He was the first minister at Watertown; a
position in those days as important as the presidency of a trunk line is
in our own. Cotton Mather and the early writers speak of him almost as
the founder of the Congregational Church in New England; and he and his
descendants were all cultivated gentlemen. Two of his great-grandsons
founded the preparatory academies at Andover and Exeter, called by that
name. John Phillips, the father of Wendell, graduated at Harvard in
1788. He was the president of the Massachusetts senate for one term, and
the first mayor of Boston, distinctly so called. His wife was a Miss
Sarah Walley of Brookline, and Wendell himself was their eighth child,
born November 29th, 1811--a year memorable for the appearance of a comet
with six tails.
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