Painting by Ammi Phillips
Oil on canvas

Philip Hasbrouck was born October 22, 1783, in Guilford, Ulster Co., NY. The hamlet of Guilford would eventually be known as Gardner. Philip was the fourth son of Joseph (1744-1808) and Elizabeth Bevier (1749-1795). On January 30th, 1810, he married Esther Bevier (his first cousin). During the first year of his marriage, he built his home on the road now named after him, Philies Bridge Road. He died unexpectedly on December 17, 1841, in New Paltz, now Gardner, Ulster Co., NY.

“Ammi Phillips began his professional career around 1811. He traveled extensively in the New York - Massachusetts - Connecticut border area, and because of this, became known as “Border Limner”. He married Laura Brockway in 1813 and the couple moved to Troy, New York. At some point they moved to Rhinebeck where his wife died in 1830. He remarried shortly after. Around 1829, he started painting in a new style. The works from this period were from his “Kent Period”, named thus because that was the town in Connecticut where the paintings first surfaced. He probably did the paintings in New York’s Duchess County. He returned to western Massachusetts in 1860 where he died five years later, his occupation was listed as a “portrait painter”.
~Ammi Phillips Biography (1788-1865)