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Original five-page handwritten autobiographical manuscript by William Irving Phillips, Wheaton College Class of 1873, prepared in response to a request from the editor of The Alumni Quarterly for his recollections of student life at Wheaton.
Phillips recalls arriving at Wheaton as a returned Civil War soldier with only thirty dollars saved toward his education. He describes his Christian conversion in the Army, his unfamiliarity with Scripture, the powerful contrast between military life and Wheaton’s student prayer meetings, and the “old fashioned revivals” held in the college chapel.
A major portion of the manuscript concerns Wheaton’s two Blanchard presidents, whom Phillips praises as:
“such valiant Christian leaders”
and as men who knew how to place:
“moral backbone into Christian students.”
Phillips describes the Blanchards’ opposition to slavery, the liquor trade, and “lodge idolatry,” while crediting their influence with sending many young men into Christian ministry and contributing to numerous conversions.
The manuscript concludes with a moving tribute to the deacon who encouraged Phillips to attend Wheaton and led him into Christian work:
“When I shall arrive home in Heaven, among those I shall be glad to meet, and give a special greeting, is Dea. Brown Hills, who first started me on the road to an education in Wheaton College.”
Signed at the conclusion:
“Wm Irving Phillips ’73.”
Phillips later became managing editor of the Christian Cynosure, the National Christian Association’s periodical devoted to opposing secret societies from a Christian perspective. His recollections therefore provide important firsthand evidence for the formation of Wheaton’s nineteenth-century evangelical and anti-secret-society identity.
From the personal historical collection of William J. Jones, Wheaton College Class of 1925, later associated with Princeton Seminary, J. Gresham Machen, Oswald T. Allis, Westminster Theological Seminary, and twentieth-century evangelical publishing.
A unique primary-source document relating to:
- Nineteenth-century Wheaton College
- Civil War veterans in Christian education
- Jonathan and Charles Blanchard
- Evangelical revival and prayer meetings
- Temperance and abolition
- Christian opposition to secret societies
- Early Wheaton alumni history
Condition: Five handwritten manuscript pages with original folds, age toning, marginal corrections and editorial revisions, and expected handling wear. Please examine all photographs carefully.Page 4 is present but not shown
William Irving Phillips, Wheaton College, Wheaton Class of 1873, Charles Blanchard, Jonathan Blanchard, Civil War soldier, Christian Cynosure, National Christian Association, anti Masonic, secret societies, evangelical history, revival history, temperance, abolition, Christian manuscript, Wheaton alumni, William J Jones provenance
