Who was Phillips Brooks?

Phillips Brooks was born 190 years ago, on 13 December 1835, the second son of William Gray Brooks, a Boston merchant, and his wife Mary Ann Phillips, whose father was one of the founders of Andover Theological Seminary. The couple had six sons, all but two of whom eventually would join the ministry. Phillips attended Boston Latin School and Harvard, graduating in 1855 at the age of 20. He briefly taught at Boston Latin School after graduation but soon decided to join the church, attending the Virginia Theological Seminary in Alexandria.

After posts in Philadelphia, in 1869 Brooks accepted the call to preach at Trinity Church in Boston, which was then located on Summer Street in downtown Boston. As that neighborhood became increasingly commercial, the parish had already decided to move to the Back Bay and purchased land there before their church was destroyed in the Great Boston Fire of November 1872. From temporary quarters, Phillips Brooks led both the congregation and the design and construction of the new Trinity Church in the heart of Copley Square, dedicated in 1877. The building, designed by architect H. H. Richardson and featuring murals by John LaFarge, is a masterpiece of Romanesque architecture and a much loved destination to this day.

In 1891, Brooks was elected the sixth Bishop of Massachusetts, a tenure that was cut short by his death in 1893. He is buried in Mount Auburn Cemetery.

The Chocolate Pot

This elegant chocolate pot bearing Phillips Brooks's monogram was made circa 1881 by Dominick & Haff of New York City. The firm, founded by Henry B. Dominick and Leroy Haff, was established in 1872 and ceased operations in 1928 and was eventually absorbed into Reed & Barton silversmiths. Although it seems odd to have a special pot just for hot chocolate, when the Spanish introduced chocolate to Europe in the seventeenth century, preparing and drinking hot chocolate was much more involved than mixing powdered chocolate and milk. According to Jess Righthand, "Preparing hot chocolate entailed a process distinctive from the other beverages popular at the time. Rather than infusing hot water with coffee grounds or tea leaves and then filtering out the sediment, hot chocolate required melting ground cacao beans in hot water, adding sugar, milk and spices and then frothing the mixture with a stirring stick called a molinet."

The defining characteristic of chocolate pots, also known as chocolatiers, was the removable finial at the top so that the frother could be inserted into the lid without cooling the elixir within. Brooks’s pot does not have this removable finial; the pot is diminutive and contains little more than a single cup. 

Phillips Brooks's chocolate pot descended through the family of Rt. Rev. Henry Knox Sherrill (1890-1980), who followed in Brooks's footsteps as rector of Trinity Church and Bishop of Massachusetts. Brooks's nieces Agnes and Gertrude Brooks gave the pot to Sherrill, noting that Brooks drank hot chocolate every morning and this pot was a treasured personal item. of his. Sherrill's descendants also treasured the pot and donated it to the Society in January of 2025.