Matthew Philips, son of Exum Philips, Captain of Militia in the Revolutionary War, from North Carolina, was born and died in Edgecombe County, North Carolina. Soon after his death in 1823 his wife, Elizabeth Nicholson Philips, daughter of Colonel John Nicholson and Penelope Mann of North Carolina, moved with her three children to Pulaski County, where other members of the Philips family had already preceded her. She settled first at Longstreet and later bought and settled on what is now the old Philips plantation, two miles east of Hawkinsville. Her children were: Martha Penelope Hooker Philips, who married John C. DeLamar; Charlotte Exum Philips, who married Dr. Augustus Taylor; John Alexander James Philips, who married Mary Elizabeth Drake, daughter of Greene W. Drake and Martha Jelks of Nash County, North Carolina. Mary Drake graduated from LaGrange College in the year 1851, and married James Philips the following year. They lived in the old Philips homestead, where seven children were born to them: Matthew Green Philips, Joseph Nicholson Philips, James Augustus Philips, William Mann Philips, and Matthew Leath Philips (all deceased) ; Louisa Drake Philips, who married James W. Coney, and had one child, William Drake Coney, who married Daisy Burge, and now lives in Douglasville, Ga.; Seaborn Manning Philips, who married Elizabeth Jones, daughter of Stephen McCall Jones, first lieutenant in the War Between the States, and Jane Orr, of Chester, South Carolina, who moved first to Calhoun, in Gordon County, and later to Hawkinsville.
The children of Seaborn Manning Philips and Elizabeth Jones, who still live in Hawkinsville, are: May Elizabeth Philips, who married James Leland Mims, of Cordele; Edith Orr Philips, Esther Drake Philips, and Louise Manning Philips.
