Philip & Eunice (Van Horne) Phillips (corner of Wheeler & Otsego Streets)

As the generation of African Americans who were once enslaved, Philip and Eunice (Van Horne) Phillips represent the modest success that steady work and home ownership provided to people who spanned the experience of both slavery and freedom in the Mohawk Valley in the mid-nineteenth century.

Philip, “a faithful and valued servant” (slave?) of the local Van Alstine family, was granted land in the Adirondacks in northern New York by abolitionist Gerrit Smith. 

Philip and his wife Eunice Van Horn became members of the Canajoharie Reformed Church where Philip as appointed sexton in 1848.

The Phillips family purchased this lot of one acre in 1851, which they then sold to Charles W. Wheeler in 1866. Eunice Phillips died in 1874 at the age of 43 while Philip died in 1881 around the age of 70. Both are buried in Saratoga.