Phoebe Foxcroft, afterwards the wife of Samuel Phillips, the joint founder, with his uncle, of the academy at Andover, Massachusetts, was a native of Cambridge, in the same state. Reared beneath the shades of "Old Harvard" and being the daughter of a man of wealth and high respectability, it is almost needless to say that she was well educated and highly refined. To mental attainments she added the finishing charm of female character, glowing piety. The last forty years or more of her life were passed at Andover, where, after the death of her husband, she assisted in founding the celebrated Theological seminary. She died in 1818.

It is said that she was accustomed, for years, to make the health of every pupil in the academy a subject of personal interest. Her attentions to their wants were impartial and incalculably beneficial. To those that came from remote towns, and were thus deprived of parental oversight, she acted the part of a faithful mother.

Affectionate, kind, generous, watchful, as a christian guardian; she was unbending, self-sacrificing and "zealous, yet modest," as a patriot. During the seven years' struggle for freedom, she frequently sat up till midnight or past, preparing bandages and scraping lint for the hospitals and making garments for the ragged soldiers.

An offender of justice was once passing her house on his way to the whipping-post, when a boy, who observed him from her window, could not withhold a tear. He tried to conceal his emotion, but Mrs. Phillips saw the pearl drop of pity, and while a kindred drop fell from her own eyes, she said to him, with much emphasis and as though laying down some golden maxim—"When you become a law maker, examine the subject of corporeal punishment, and see if it is not unnatural, vindictive and productive of much evil." She was very discriminating, and could detect talent as well as tears; and addressed the lad with a premonition that he was destined to become a legislator—which was indeed the case. Elected to the assembly of the state, with the sacred command of his early and revered mentor impressed on his memory, he early called the attention of that body to the subject of corporeal punishment; had the statute book revised and the odious law, save in capital offences, expunged, and the pleasure of announcing the fact to the original suggestor of the movement.