If This House Could Talk...

By Bonnie Heidinger 

Ann Michels of Anna and Nancy Watkins of Jonesboro received prizes from PAST for correctly identifying the location and current owners of the house featured in the September 27 Gazette-Democrat column.

Jim and Pat Tripp reside in the “Phillips” home at 511 South Main in Anna.  Some people may also refer to it as the house where Lincoln slept.

Why the Phillips home?  David L. and Charlotte Phillips were the original builders of the house.  An ordained Baptist minister, David Phillips came to Union County when he was called to minister to the Jonesboro Baptist flock.  He retired from the ministry in 1851 to become a general land agent and attorney for the Illinois Central Railroad company, which was then planning construction of a Cairo to Centralia railroad

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David L. Phillips, Ben Wiley, and Lewis Ashley, partners in an Anna land office, drew up the first plat for Anna in 1854.  Phillips secured a post office for the new town and became its first postmaster.  He was elected one of the first trustees of Anna.  The first town census in 1855 shows that Phillips had built the European Hotel, situated next to the location of the later Anna Hotel.

The growing Phillips family bought lots in the West Davie 3^rd Addition and, striking out onto new territory at the time, built a house in 1856.  The basic outside structure of the edifice remains the same today, except the original had a two-story porch across the front.  A Geneva Wiggs photograph donated to the current owners shows the original façade.  A sun room and a sitting room now used as an office/study were added to the back of the house and  a laundry room and a bathroom were formed by enclosing and enlarging a south side porch, all done by 20^th century owners.

Abraham Lincoln stayed at the house 2 nights when he came to debate U. S. Senator Stephen A. Douglas in 1858.  Phillips had invited his fellow Republican friend to stay in his relatively new house.

The Phillips oldest son, Judson, was 11 years old when Lincoln visited.  He was interviewed extensively by journalists and authors in 1908 when the 50^th anniversary of the Jonesboro Debate was celebrated.  George W. Smith, SIU history professor, shares Judson’s memories of Lincoln in his book, When Lincoln Visited Egypt. Judson Phillips practiced law in Anna, and at his death in 1921 he was buried in the Anna Cemetery

Before David L. Phillips left Anna in 1866 to become editor of the Springfield State Journal, he had sold the property to a Wilcox.  Charles Otrich bought the house in 1886 and sold it to Anna dentist Clay Walser and family in 1911. 

The Walsers did considerable remodeling.  One attractive addition was the elaborate columned divider between the living room and dining room.  The wood used matches the “pumpkin pine” used in the original  wide baseboards and trim around the 47 windows in the house.

Mrs. Walser, a music lover, appropriated the front gabled room as a music room where she proudly displayed the paintings she made of each of her 6 children.

When the Walser relatives visited the house after the later Tripps’ renovation, they related that the front double porches were already gone when they lived there.  The large lot extending all the way to Morgan Street remained.  At the back of the house was a rock garden and many plantings of irises and dahlias, prize winners at the fair

The Walsers lived there until 1955 when Dr. Waldo Houghton bought the house.  Charles Lewis purchased the house in 1962 and much later divided the house into 2 rental apartments.  The Anna National Bank repossessed the property in 1989, and the Tripps purchased the house in 1991

PAST applauds Jim and Pat Tripp for renovating an historic structural treasure of Union County.