William Phillips

William Phillips (May 30, 1878 – February 23, 1968) was a career United States diplomat who served twice as an Under Secretary of State.

Phillips was a member of the Boston Brahmin Phillips family and his ancestors included John Phillips, the first Mayor of Boston and his great-grandfather, Wendell Phillips, the abolitionist and his grand-uncle, and Samuel Phillips Jr., and John Phillips, founders of the Phillips Academy and Phillips Exeter Academy. He was a descendant of the Rev. George Phillips of Watertown, the progenitor of the New England Phillips family in America.

He graduated from Harvard College in 1900 and graduated from Harvard Law School in 1903.

In 1914, Phillips was appointed as Assistant Secretary of State under President Woodrow Wilson and remained in that position until 1920, when he was made the Minister Plenipotentiary to Netherlands and Luxembourg (in residence in the Netherlands).

From 1922 to 1924, he served as Under Secretary of State. In 1924, he was appointed as Ambassador to Belgium, where he remained until 1927, when he became the first Minister to Canada until 1929. (The United States would not have an official mission there until the country's independence in 1947.) Phillips was said to be extremely unpopular with the British for his pro-independence views. In 1943, he was made a Special Advisor on European political matters to General Dwight D. Eisenhower, with the rank of ambassador.

Personal life

In 1910, Phillips married Caroline Astor Drayton (1880–1965), a daughter of Charlotte Augusta Astor (1858–1920) and J. Coleman Drayton (1852–1934) and a granddaughter of William Backhouse Astor Jr. (1829–1892) and Caroline Webster Schermerhorn (1830–1908). Through her father, she was a great-granddaughter of U.S. Representative William Drayton (1776–1846). in 1951. William Phillips Jr. (1916–1991), who married Barbara Holbrook (1915–1997), in 1941. Drayton Phillips (1917–1985), who married Evelyn Gardiner in 1940. Christopher Hallowell Phillips (1920–2008), served as United States Ambassador to Brunei from 1989 to 1991. who married John Winslow Bryant (1914–1999), in 1942.

Phillips died on February 23, 1968, at the age of 89.