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In the spring of 1877, John Hutchinson of the famous Hutchinson Family singers finished a series of concerts in Washington, D. C. He sent for his wife, Fanny; and then they started west to Illinois on a trip that involved professional engagements, as well as visits with family and friends in Chicago and Wheaton.

David and Evan Hughes, who were singing in John's group at the time, told him about Lillie C. Phillips, a vocalist they once heard when she was but a girl in her home state of Pennsylvania. So, evidently sometime in April, the Hutchinsons, along with Chicago agent H. L. Slayton, visited Lillie's church to listen for themselves.

Lillie was the daughter of Isaac and Louisa Phillips. Hers was a musical family; and she seems to have been fairly well known in Chicago already, having sung with Annie Louise Cary and other notable musicians of the day. Lillie had a wonderful mezzo-soprano voice which she managed skillfully. Her brothers, Chapin and Fred, were both accomplished singers.

Hearing Lillie sing, just once, was all it took to convince John and Fanny Hutchinson that they wanted to enlist her in their vocal group.

At the time, the Hutchinsons needed to recruit singers from outside the family. For one thing, John and Fanny's son Henry had proven to be quite restless. He would tour with his father's company for a time; and then he would go off to start a new business enterprise or join an opera company or work on a construction crew.

Now, we might ask why a young singer such as Lillie would want to put aside the promise of a solo career to sing as a member of America's oldest and possibly most nomadic vocal group. After all, the Hutchinson Family reached their greatest peak of popularity before Lillie was born, back when they were singing their songs of freedom in support of the antislavery agitation. By the mid-1870s, the two main groups  -  one led by John and another by his brother Asa  -  were nearing the end of their careers. But when Lillie traveled to Massachusetts in August 1877 to join John Hutchinson's company, the decision seems not to have been a hard one to make. Lillie proved to be a Hutchinson in all but name.

In no time after Lillie's advent, music fans were flocking to Hutchinson Family concerts again. Word-of-mouth advertising can be a quick and wonderful thing! A few months later, Henry J. Hutchinson (1844-1884) heard Lillie sing for the first time; and he permitted himself to be lured back into his father's troupe, which may answer the musical question of what love has to do with it.

Hundreds of reviews  -  perhaps thousands  -  described Hutchinson Family harmonies as perfect. Though Lillie was not related to the other group members, her voice mixed with theirs exceptionally well.

Lillie [said John] was versed in the more modern methods of concert singing. Henry had had an experience which gave him command of more heavy solos, as well as of the simpler songs of humanity which he had always sung with Fanny and myself. We sought to retain the old favorites in our programmes, while giving a representation also to the best modern concert selections. The combination seemed to take our audiences by storm.

John had to think back more than twenty-five years to remember a time when he had so many engagements. This company went from success to success, including a delightful tour of the West Coast, from the Mexican border all the way up into British Columbia.

Hutchinson Family written records  -  which are extensive, to say the least  -  are silent about the wedding of Henry and Lillie, though they may have been married in New York or somewhere along their route to California.

The Hutchinsons traveled by day and gave concerts night after night. Though Henry was among the most popular American singers of the time, it is surprising how many press notices from this tour concentrate, instead, on the solos of Lillie and of John - who was then fifty-eight years old! One of Lillie's best-received songs was Robert Topliff's "Consider the Lilies." John and his brother-in-law, Ludlow Patton, preserved a large number of notices from this West Coast tour; and it is interesting that none of them mention that Lillie was pregnant  -  none that I've read anyway.

In September 1879, the Hutchinsons were traveling in a four-horse stagecoach across the mountains of Oregon and California, bound for San Francisco. Their vehicle set new standards for dis-comfort. They gave concerts in cities and towns, all along the way to the Golden Gate. The trip must have been particularly trying for Lillie and Jack (Henry John Hutchinson, 1879-1904), her month-old baby. Perhaps the rough going brought to mind one of the Hutchinsons's old songs, "Riding in a Stage."

Feet are interlacing, heads severely bumped; Friend and foe together, get their noses thumped. Dresses act as carpets; listen to the sage: Life is but a journey, taken in a stage.

Woody Guthrie wrote about his hard travelin'. It seems Lillie could have added a thought or two on that subject.

In San Francisco, the heat was oppressive; and many of the local people fled to the cool breezes of the coastal villages. But the Hutchinson Family sang in uncomfortable halls for the entertainment of those folks who couldn't get away from the city heat. We have no record of any complaints from Lillie. For the next twenty years and possibly more, it would be her fate to travel through every part of this country and in every climate, playing a portable melodeon and singing for the people. She sang in magnificent concert halls and at the White House, as well as in the streets of America's great cities and towns.

In its January 3, 1879, issue, the Sacramento Daily Record said, "Miss Lillie C. Phillips has a mezzo-soprano voice of broad register, pure, fluent and of enchanting sweetness and delicacy. She has more of expression and dramatic power than is common to the most highly cultured sopranos. Since Miss Cary, we have had no one here who approaches the high standard of that lady, as does Miss Phillips." In a notice published on April 8, 1879, the San Diego Union agreed, and added, "Her ballads are really charming, sung with pure intonation and every word as distinct as though rendered by a professional elocutionist. Her voice also shows good cultivation, and in the 'Flower song' from Faust, was as flexible and yet as true to the score as the severest critic could desire."

During the same California tour, the Santa Barbara Advertiser said that "her audience could have listened for hours without feeling weary." Publicity used by John Hutchinson's company included this rave from the San Francisco Alta about the group's harmonies:  "The quartette singing of this family is without doubt the finest ever heard in this city. . . . "

After completing the tour of the West Coast, Lillie played the title role, in the Midwest and New England, in the dramatic cantata, "Ruth, the Moabitess."

Henry Hutchinson died of consumption in 1884. A couple years later, Lillie and her sons, Jack and Richard D. Hutchinson (b. 1882), moved to Chicago. If Lillie thought then that her touring days were over, she would have been greatly mistaken. On October 12, 1886, she married Rev. Henry Morgan (1840-1917), a traveling evangelist  -  with emphasis on the word, traveling.

For another eight years, Lillie and her boys journeyed from sea to shining sea, riding in a wagon  -  or in whatever mode of transportation was required  -  to get them to the next church on time. When giving concerts, Lillie, Jack, and Richard seem to have been billed simply as "the Hutchinson Family." On evangelical occasions when Rev. Morgan was featured, the trio would sing and then he would preach. When they performed outdoors, Jack would blow a fanfare on his cornet to attract a crowd. Lillie played a portable organ that was fixed in the back of the wagon; and she and her boys sang everything from Mozart and Handel to sentimental songs, such as "My Trundle Bed; or, Recollections of Childhood." Oliver Dennett Hutchinson thought his was the last Hutchinson Family group to tour widely and perform often. He could be right. But Lillie and her boys at the very least came close.

Though Lillie was a member of one of America's most important and famous vocal groups, and though she was prominently before the public for the better part of three decades, it is surprising how little has been written about her life and career. And it appears that genealogical work on her branch of the Phillips and Hutchinson families is yet to be done. All the information that is currently available about Lillie  -  with very rare exceptions  -  comes from John Hutchinson's 1896 book and from the Hutchinson Family Scrapbook kept by John's brother-in-law, Ludlow Patton.

Lillie's reviews were consistently excellent. She did as much as anyone to return the Hutchinson Family to a high level of success late in their careers. She sang for audiences great and small. She performed in big cities and in small-town America. Lillie sang popular songs, songs of faith, and selections from operas and the classical repertoire. And she sang in support of causes such as temperance and women's rights. She sang in all four corners of the country and in every region in between. Lillie C. Phillips is a singer who very much deserves to be remembered.

-- Alan Lewis, revised November 6, 2002

References

John Wallace Hutchinson. Story of the Hutchinsons (Tribe of Jesse). 2 vols. Compiled and Edited by Charles E. Mann, With an Introduction by Frederick Douglass. Boston: Lee and Shepard. 1896.

Ludlow Patton. Hutchinson Family Scrapbook. Wadleigh Memorial Library, Milford, New Hampshire. 1906.

Correspondence with Barbara Hazzard was quite helpful in preparing this bio. Barbara is a great-granddaughter of Lillie's brother, Chapin Frank Phillips (ca. 1860-1915).

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In the fall of 2004, The Revels, an acclaimed Boston musical and theatrical organization (best known for its annual Christmas Revels), started giving public performances of its latest and quite wonderful production, There's a Meeting Here Tonight!, which is based on the lives and careers of the Hutchinson Family singers. Follow this link for a review of the second-ever public staging of There's a Meeting Here Tonight!  which took place right here in Brattleboro, Vermont:

www.oocities.org/unclesamsfarm/revels.htm

Posters were put up all over town advertising the Brattleboro production of There's a Meeting Here Tonight!  Individual sketches of the members of John Hutchinson's 1881 concert company were used to illustrate the posters. Henry and Lillie appeared on the left. It seemed so strange to walk around town and see Lillie's face wherever I went.

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Copyright © 2001, 2002, 2004 by Alan Lewis.
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