Spencer, Cornelia Phillips, 1825-1908

Cornelia Phillips Spencer, writer and community leader of Chapel Hill, N.C., was the daughter of University of North Carolina mathematics professor James Phillips (1792-1867) and Judith Vermeule Phillips (1796-1881), wife of lawyer James Monroe Spencer (1827-1861), and mother of Julia Spencer Love (b. 1859), who married Harvard University mathematician James Lee Love (1860-1950).

Cornelia Ann Phillips was born 20 March 1825 in Harlem, N.Y., the daughter of James Phillips (1792-1867) and Judith Vermeule Phillips (1796-1881). Her mother, Judith Vermeule, was a member of an old Dutch family that hailed from the Raritan Valley of New Jersey. James Phillips, an Englishman who migrated to America in 1815, moved his family to Chapel Hill, N.C. in 1826, when he became professor of mathematics at the University of North Carolina, where he taught until his death in 1867. Cornelia was the youngest of three children. Brother Charles Phillips became professor of mathematics and engineering at the University of North Carolina, and Samuel Field Phillips was the United States solicitor general under President Ulysses S. Grant.

Cornelia grew up in Chapel Hill, and was educated in Latin, Greek, French, and all forms of literature (of which she was especially fond), as well as music, drawing, and needlework.

On 20 June 1855, Cornelia Phillips married James Monroe ( Magnus ) Spencer (1827-1861), a lawyer and alumnus of the University of North Carolina class of 1853. In 1859, four years after the couple had settled in Clinton, Ala., Cornelia gave birth to a daughter, Julia ( June ) James Spencer.

In June 1861, James Monroe Spencer died after a long illness. Several months later, Cornelia Phillips Spencer yielded to her father's pleas to return to Chapel Hill. Here, shortly after the Civil War, she began to make her mark as a writer. In 1866, at the encouragement of her friend, former Governor David Lowry Swain (1801-1868), she published her first work, The Last Ninety Days of the War . In 1869, she wrote Pen and Ink Sketches of the University of North Carolina, and, from 1870 to 1876, wrote a weekly Young Ladies' Column for The Presbyterian . Her frequent articles and letters to editors and state leaders played an important role in the reopening of the University of North Carolina in 1875, and in campaigns for other causes such as the founding of the University Normal School.

In 1894, Cornelia Phillips Spencer moved to Cambridge, Mass., to live with her daughter June, whose husband, James Lee Love (1860-1950), was a professor of mathematics at Harvard. One year later she was awarded an honorary degree by the University of North Carolina, the first such degree given to a woman by the University.

Cornelia Phillips Spencer died on 11 March 1908 in Cambridge.

For additional information see The Woman Who Rang the Bell by Charles Phillips Russell (Chapel Hill: UNC Press, 1949); Old Days in Chapel Hill by Hope Summerell Chamberlain (Chapel Hill: UNC Press, 1926); and Selected Papers [of Cornelia Phillips Spencer] edited by Louis Round Wilson (Chapel Hill: UNC Press, 1953).