American Folk Figure. Born in Bucyrus, Ohio, she was heralded as one of the most beautiful women in Ohio in the 1890s. Married to James Phillips, a department store co-owner in Marion, Ohio, the newlywed couple set up housekeeping on Main Street in Marion. With her husband, Carrie Phillips had two children, a girl, and a boy. The boy, James Fulton Phillips died while a toddler. Their daughter Isabel survived into adulthood. It wasn't long before the young woman came under the eye of Marion Star publisher Warren G. Harding. The Hardings and the Phillips were friends, however, she and Harding began a very well-documented affair in 1905 that would last until just before the 1920 Presidential Campaign. Phillips' documentation of the relationship came in the form of impassioned love letters from Harding, some written on United States Senate stationery. The Republican Party was made aware of the relationship and successfully bought Carrie Phillips silence with a lump sum payment in cash, along with a two-year tour of the orient; following her return, she would receive an annual stipend, again, for her silence. As she aged, her sentiments for Germany and German culture became well know – so much so that during both World Wars, she was kept under surveillance by the Federal Government. Towards the end of her life, Carrie Phillips' eccentricities became well known in Marion. A lover of pure bred German Shepherds, her home in Marion was known to be overrun with the dogs. Phillips eventually did turn her letters from Harding over to an author who planned to use their steamy content as documentation for a book he was writing on Harding. The matter ended up in court following Phillips death by the Harding heirs who sought and won an injunction squashing the letters from public access until 2023, the centennial year of Harding's death. However, in the 2000s, a Cleveland-based author found a microfilmed copy of the letters free from the court action and brought them public. Carrie Phillips died in Marion County Ohio in 1960; she is buried in Marion Cemetery next to her husband and their son, who died as a toddler.