A great war had settled upon our nation and had rent the fabric of national unity from east to west, dividing us into north and south, setting family against family, brother against brother, and sometimes father against son. It was in these times somewhere around the middle or the early 1860s that William Phillips came across the state line from Ripley County, Missouri and settled in Randolph County, AR ending the wandering that had characterized the life of his family for over thirty years.

While knowledge of the psychological motives, economic imperatives, or family ties that drove this wandering has slipped through a crack in the continuum of time and remains lost to our generation, the records of family births speak fairly clearly of a perpetual wandering.

Both William and his wife Catherine (sometimes listed as Rebecca) were born in North Carolina, but later moved to Tennessee. (Whether they married in NC or later in TN is not known.) Their children were

Margaret, b:1828 in TN; James J., b: 1832 in AL; Julia Ann, b: 1834 in AL; William, b: 1838, in TN; Serrinda, b: 1840, in AL; Mary, b: 1842 in AL; Serrinda in about 1840 and Mary in 1842; Benjamin Franklin, b: 1845 in MS, and Rosanna, b: 1847 in MS. The children born in Tennessee except possible for Margaret where born in Hardin County and those born in Mississippi were both born in Tishomingo County, MS. Sarah was born in Tennessee in about 1852. The 1860 US Census shows the family in Ripley County, MO. Finally, after all of these wanderings, John and Frank were born after the family settled in Randolph Country, AR. John was born in 1859, and Frank in 1865. They were in Little Black Township where, apparently, they remained until the death of William in July 31, 1876.

Exactly when the William Phillips family came to Randolph County is not known, but land records show that in August 1862 while still living in Ripley County, MO, William purchased about 200 acres of land described as follows: State of Arkansas, County of Randolph, Township Twenty North in Range One East. It seems reasonable that the Phillips family moved to Randolph County shortly after this purchase.

One of these children, Benjamin Franklin Phillips, came to Randolph County and established a lineage that still has some of its members in Randolph County until this day. James Phillips also settled in Randolph County and raised a large family with descendants now living in Randolph County, but I shall leave the stories of Benjamin and James until another time.