Phoebus was the son of the Reverend Lewis and Sally (
née Ross) Phoebus, youngest of sixteen children; his mother was the third wife of Lewis Phoebus. 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. Harrison Phoebus died suddenly of a heart ailment on February 25, 1886 at the age of 45. He was interred at the cemetery of
St. John's Episcopal Church in
Hampton. After Phoebus's death and the opening of the new
Chamberlin in 1896 the Hygeia began to fall into disrepair. In 1902, Secretary of the Army
Elihu Root signed an order authorizing the demolition of the Hygeia Hotel to make space for a planned expansion of Fort Monroe. The Army's planned addition to Fort Monroe never materialized and eventually the vast empty space was seeded in grass and made into a park. ==References==