Butte County
Biographies
MRS. EMMA HICKES PHILLIPS
MRS. EMMA HICKES PHILLIPS. – A
resident of California since 1870, a period covering nearly fifty years, during
which time Mrs. Phillips has watched with interest the development and upbuilding of the state. She has lived in Chico for fifteen
years and has followed nursing with very good success and has become well known
and successful in her ministrations and care of the sick.
Emma Hickes was
born in Newcomerstown, Tuscarawas County, Ohio, a
daughter of Edmund Hickes. As an English lad he was
brought to America by his parents, who settled in Ohio, and there their son was
reared and learned the trades of millwright and machinist. He bought forty
acres of land, and built and operated a gristmill, which was run by waterpower.
In the evenings he made spinning wheels for spinning linen thread; looms for
weaving woolen goods; and he made, from local timber, several flying shuttles,
but he did not patent them, although they proved a success. He married Jane
Walker, a native of Ohio, a daughter of William Walker, an Englishman, who,
with his wife, settled in Ohio in an early day. Mrs. Hickes
died when her daughter, Emma, was but four years old. Her father lived to be
sixty-five. There were eight children in the Hickes
family, six of them being sons, and three of these, John, Thomas and James,
served in Ohio regiments in the Civil War; the two older sons were wounded in
action and taken prisoners, and Thomas died in prison.
The fifth child in the family, Emma Hickes, was reared in Ohio and attended the public schools
of Newcomerstown and Coshocton. At the age of eleven she went to live with an
old couple and at that time received her first lessons in nursing, the old lady
being crippled with rheumatism. Three years after taking up her home with these
people, the old lady died, and the following year, in 1870, Miss Hickes came to California with an aunt and uncle,
Mr. and Mrs. Benjamin Hawkins. Mrs. Hawkins was a sister of her
mother’s. They went to Sonoma County, but later removed to Burney Valley,
Shasta County, where Mr. Hawkins was engaged in ranching until his death, which
occurred soon after settling there. Mrs. Hawkins and her niece still continued
to live there until they moved to Montgomery Creek, and here Emma Hickes was married, in 1871, to Isaac Phillips.
Mr. Phillips was born in Kentucky, and
when three years old he was taken by his parents to Osceola, Mo., where he
lived and grew up. In 1851, he started across the plains with ox teams. The
party of which he was a member had considerable trouble with the Indians,
losing all their cattle, and Mr. Phillips made the rest of the way to
California on foot, carrying his rifle, but this he finally discarded as it
weighed sixteen pounds. When he arrived at his destination he had a lone
fifty-cent piece in his possession and he at once went to work as a miner. He
continued mining for several years, then with a
partner he engaged in hunting elk in the tules near
Benicia, selling the meat and hides at Benicia. When they dissolved
partnership, Mr. Phillips settled on South Cow Creek, Shasta County, and
improved a ranch of three hundred twenty acres, and raised stock and draft
horses. He sold this ranch and bought what is known as the Cuykendall
Ranch in Oak Run Valley, and here he made the acquaintance of Miss Hickes, whom he later married, and for five years they made
their home on the ranch, then bought the Brown place on North Cow Creek, where
they owned two hundred acres which they farmed successfully and where Mr.
Phillips set out an orchard. He died there, January 28, 1897, past seventy
years of age. He had served in quelling the Indian troubles when they were a
menace to the settlers and was one of a small party of white men who succeeded
in routing the red men.
After the death of her husband, Mrs.
Phillips remained on the ranch, and managed the business for some time. Three
of her sons built a sawmill on North Cow Creek,
operated by water power, and they have conducted it with success ever since.
When she sold the ranch and moved into Chico Vecino,
in 1903, where she bought a lot, her sons made the lumber in their mill and
sent it to Chico, two of them coming down and putting up her house. The home is
located at the corner of Second Avenue and Magnolia Street.
Mrs. Phillips has had five children:
Edmund James, who is engaged in manufacturing lumber on North Cow Creek, and
who is married and has nine children; Linnie Lenota, Mrs. Strayer, of
Chico, has four children; Daniel Winfield, who is a partner in the lumber
business with his brother E. J., and who has six children; Frank Albert, who is
in the employ of the Dubroy Motor Company in Chico,
and who is the father of four children; Archibald Chesleigh,
who graduated from the Chico High School and the State Normal and taught four
years, who is now employed in the Chico post office, and who has two children.
Archibald has considerable literary talent and has a book of poems being
printed in Baltimore. Mrs. Phillips is a member of the Baptist Church. She is a
Prohibitionist.
Transcribed by Marie Hassard
24 April 2008.
Source:
"History of Butte County, Cal.," by George C. Mansfield, Pages 891-893, Historic Record Co, Los
Angeles, CA, 1918.
© 2008 Marie Hassard.
Golden Nugget Library's Butte County Biographies