Biography
A native of Somerset County, Maryland, Harrison Phoebus served in the Union Army during the Civil War. After the War, he became an employee of Adams Express Company where he gained a reputation for diligence and flexibility.
In 1866, he was transferred to become the resident agent for Adams Express at Old Point Comfort in Elizabeth City County, Virginia. He has been described by author Parke S. Rouse Jr. as a "one-man industry", serving as Old Point's representative of shipping companies, postmaster, notary public, insurance agent and U.S. commissioner. Much of his work was related to the steamships which plied the Chesapeake Bay on routes and routinely docked there.
In 1874, with financial backing from Samuel Shoemaker, a wealthy friend from Baltimore, he acquired the luxurious Hygeia Hotel. The red four story Victorian structure built in 1868 was the second on the site, rebuilt from an earlier hotel of the same name built in 1820 by William Armstrong while Fort Monroe was under construction. Managed by Marshall Parks of Norfolk, the earlier Hygeia had served until it was demolished by the Union Army in 1862 during the American Civil War.
Phoebus built additions to his hotel, chartered boats to bring visitors, and soon Old Point Comfort was on its way to becoming a place where diplomats and government officials mingled with the elite of Baltimore, Philadelphia, Richmond and the Deep South. Amenities he added included hydraulic elevators, gaslights, electric call bells in each bedroom, and bathrooms on every floor. He installed several types of baths intended for medicinal purposes, a popular feature of the era.
Harrison Phoebus is credited with persuading Collis Huntington's Chesapeake & Ohio Railroad to extend its tracks of the Peninsula Subdivision from Newport News to the community. The railroad named its station and post office after him.
Harrison Phoebus died suddenly of a heart ailment in 1886 at the age of 45. He was interred at the cemetery of St. John's Episcopal Church in Hampton. After the community of Chesapeake City became incorporated as a town in 1900, it was renamed Phoebus in his honor. Roseland Manor, the home he was having built for his family at his untimely death, stood as a community landmark near Strawberry Banks until it was destroyed in a fire in 1985.
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