Author: Phillips, Catharine
Biography:
PHILLIPS, Catharine, formerly PAYTON (1726-94: findmypast.com)
A celebrated Quaker preacher, she was born at Dudley, Gloucestershire, one of six children of Ann or Anne (Fowler) and Henry Payton; Quaker records give her date of birth as 16 Mar. 1726 although later biographies including ODNB have 1727. Her name appears variously as Catharine, Catherine, and Katherine (the birth-record spelling). Her father ministered at Dudley, where she began her preaching career in 1748. She travelled widely in Great Britain, Holland, and North America as a missionary for her faith. In 1749 a Cornish widower, William Phillips (d 1785), proposed marriage but she refused him partly because of her calling and partly, it seems, because she was not sure of his religious principles. They met again in 1766, however, and on 15 July 1772 they had a Quaker marriage at Bewdley, Warwickshire, and then settled—or rather based themselves, for she continued her work--in Redruth, Cornwall. Her Memoirs, begun after the death of her husband in 1785 and published in 1797 after her own death, describe her youthful delight in profane reading such as poetry and romances. She maintained an extensive correspondence but her publications were few and mainly practical, consisting of pamphlets on pressing social issues such as slavery and the corn laws, and on matters of concern to her fellow Quakers, such as a proposed collaboration with the Methodists. She died at Redruth on 16 Aug. 1794 and was buried on 30 Aug. at the Kea (“Coming-to-Good”) Quaker Burial Ground at Feock, Cornwall, where her husband had been laid to rest nine years earlier. (findmypast.com 28 Sept. 2023; ODNB 28 Sept. 2023; ancestry.com 28 Sept. 2023; Catherine Phillips, Memoirs [1797]; Orlando 28 Sept. 2023)
Other Names:
- Mrs. Phillips
- Catherine Phillips