ABSTRACT
Phillips became associated with William Smith as a result o f the mobility and marriage o f his father, also John. He was the younger son o f a Welsh family which for generations had lived at Myddfai in Carmarthenshire. Bom in 1769 he was educated to follow several o f his relatives into the church but in 1795 he moved to Bristol to pursue a career as an assistant excise officer. Though often reviled, such a post was not humble and required training in mathematics and the use o f instruments. Next year Phillips was promoted to be in charge o f the Stow-on-the-Wold area in Gloucestershire and moved to nearby Oddington where he met Elizabeth Smith whom he married in her home village o f Churchill, Oxfordshire, in 1798. She was the daughter o f John Smith, a blacksmith, and had three brothers, William (an engineer and mineral surveyor), Daniel, and John. Soon after his marriage Phillips was transferred to Market and West Lavington in Wiltshire and the couple set up home in Marden where their first two children, Ann (who died in infancy) and John were born. In 1801 Phillips resigned his post with the excise and moved to Midford near Bath where a second daughter, Anne, was born in 1803. The family might then have lived at Tucking Mill House, between Midford and Monckton Combe, which William Smith had bought in 1798. In m id-1803 Phillips rejoined the excise, was put in charge of Deddington, Oxfordshire, and his family moved to nearby Steeple Aston where a second son, Jenkin, was bom in 1806. That year he was promoted to an excise post in Coventry to which the family moved. He died there in January 1808. His widow and children moved to Churchill, but she died in July 1808 leaving three orphans. Faced with this double tragedy, her husband’s family did nothing but her three brothers responded nobly: Jenkin stayed at Churchill in the care o f Daniel Smith while John and Anne were looked after by William Smith (Fig. 1.1). Early
in 1809 he took them to his brother, John, who lived at Broadfield Farm, between Hinton Charterhouse and Midford.2
