“The Backstory of the Black Regiment: Soldiers’ Ties to Community and Kin”

Lecture by Peter Fay, Patriots Park Commemoration by NAACP

Patriots Park, Portsmouth, RI,

August 27, 2023, 3 pm

Philo Phillips of North Kingstown was 27 when his owner sold him into the state’s Black Regiment during the Revolutionary War. Now a soldier, he marched and fought for his life and freedom. However, like many soldiers, he was not alone. His wife accompanied him throughout the war as a “camp follower”, furnishing food, laundry, and nursing. She also earned income as a washerwoman for other soldiers. A year later, she learned her husband was captured by the British troops during a skirmish and was held captive in Newport. Six months later he escaped back to the regiment where his wife remained. At the end of the war, after five long years of service, Philo Phillips was honorably discharged.

After the war, he was impoverished, and his wife was blind. He sought and found help from the Black community, and years later the Providence Gazette commemorated the death of this “respectable man of color” at age 75.

Soldiers’ lives depended on their comrades in battle. But Mr. Fay will uncover the stories of women and others whose support was crucial to the Black Regiment’s success during the privations of war and its aftermath.