Phyllis Schlafly - Family

Family

Schlafly's great-grandfather Stewart, a Presbyterian, came from Scotland to New York in 1851 and moved westward through Canada before settling in Michigan. Her grandfather, Andrew F. Stewart, was a master mechanic with the Chesapeake & Ohio Railway. Schlafly's father, John Bruce Stewart, was a machinist and salesman of industrial equipment, principally for Westinghouse. He became unemployed in 1932 during the Great Depression and could not find permanent work until World War II. He was granted a patent in 1944 for a rotary engine.

Schlafly's mother was the daughter of attorney Ernest C. Dodge. She attended college through graduate school and worked as a teacher at Hosmer Hall private school for girls in St. Louis. With her father’s legal business suffering during the Great Depression and her husband out of work, she worked as a librarian and a school teacher to support her family.

Phyllis' husband, attorney John Fred Schlafly, Jr., came from a well-to-do St. Louis family. His grandfather, August, immigrated in 1854 from Switzerland. In 1876, his older brother married Catharine Hubert, the daughter of a local businessman. Shortly thereafter, the three brothers founded the firm of Schlafly Bros., which dealt in groceries, Queensware (dishes made by Wedgwood), hardware, and agricultural implements. They later sold that business and concentrated on banking and other businesses that made them wealthy.

On October 20, 1949, Phyllis married lawyer John Fred Schlafly, Jr. and remained married until he died in 1993. They moved to Alton, Illinois and had six children: John, Bruce, Roger, Liza, Andrew, and Anne. In 1992, their eldest son, John, was outed as gay by Queer Week magazine. Schlafly acknowledged that John is gay, but stated that he embraces his mother's views. Their son Andrew founded Conservapedia, a conservative open-source encyclopedia, after voicing concerns that Wikipedia had a liberal bias. She is the aunt-in-law of St. Louis brewery owner Thomas Schlafly. She is also the aunt of conservative anti-feminist author Suzanne Venker, together with whom she wrote The Flipside of Feminism: What Conservative Women Know — and Men Can't Say.