Bessie Phillips and the Stephen Phillips Memorial Trust House
34 Chestnut Street

Wanting to leave a memorial to her husband, Stephen, his family, and Salem’s maritime history, Bessie Gertrude Wright Phillips (1906-96) established the Stephen Phillips Memorial Trust House as a museum to be enjoyed by the public. Working hard to gather and maintain a stellar collection, the Phillips House contains five generations of the family’s belongings, including Oceanic artifacts, export porcelain, oriental carpets, and furniture; the carriage house holds a wonderful assortment of vintage automobiles, horse-drawn carriages, and sleighs. Architecturally, the Phillips House is an example of the “house moving” that happened in Salem on a regular basis (see S10). The four front rooms were moved from Oak Hill in Danvers (now, Peabody) in 1820 and 1821. Open seasonally, thousands of visitors have benefited from Bessie Phillips’s generosity. In addition, she is remembered for preserving and donating seven thousand acres of pristine land in Maine’s Rangeley Lakes region, for establishing one of the largest scholarship funds in America, and for supporting educational programs at the Peabody Essex Museum (see S45).

Number 34 Chestnut Street was also the site of Tabitha Ward’s school for girls in the mid-1800s (see S37).