Philip Mauro was born in St Louis, Missouri on 7 January 1859. He was the son of Charles George Mauro, a lawyer, and Charlotte Emmeline “Clementina” Davis, both natives of Washington, DC.

Raised in St Louis with his siblings, Mauro relocated to Washington, DC where he studied law. Later a well-known Evangelical Christian writer, orator and attorney, one of his most famous legal cases was in 1925 when he prepared briefs for the Scopes Trial, in which a high school teacher was accused of breaching Tennessee state laws by teaching evolution. Mauro was an ardent creationist and prior to the Scopes case had authored an anti-evolution book entitled Evolution at the Bar. 

He married in June 1881 to Emily Johnston Rockwood (b. 1858), a native of Boston; they had two daughters, Margaret and Isabel and made their home in the US capital. 

In April 1912 Mauro and his daughter Margaret were first cabin passengers aboard the Carpathia when that ship rescued the survivors of the Titanic disaster. They continued on to Europe after the survivors had been landed in New York and wrote of his experiences whilst vacationing in Italy.

Widowed in August 1917, Mauro was remarried in 1930 to Virginia-born Frances Perry (b. 1881), a secretary, and the couple made their home in Culpeper, Virginia.

Philip Mauro died aged 93 from heart failure and senility in Staunton, Virginia on 7 April 1952. He was buried in the Masonic Cemetery in Culpeper.