Though very little is currently known about Phill’s life, he worked at the Capitol as a laborer and may have worked in the grocery store of his enslaver.
A receipt from 1834 noted that an enslaved man named Jerry Bennehan had hauled an anvil and bellows from Fayetteville to the Capitol. Jerry was enslaved at Stagville, a plantation in central North Carolina about a day's ride from the Capitol.
Retracing the lives of enslaved people is a difficult process, as those updating written records were primarily White people and often enslavers. At time, historical documents refer to enslaved laborers at the Capitol but do not record names - we recognize and remember those individuals with "Unnamed."
