Coffin family papers

Historical/Biographical Note

Historical/Biographical Note

The Coffin family was originally from Devonshire, England, and was somewhat prominent there. Tristram Coffin Sr. was a royalist during the English Civil War. He chose to leave England when the king was deposed and Oliver Cromwell was installed. In 1646, the family, with the exception of the two older sons, Peter and Tristram, emigrated, eventually settling on Nantucket. Peter, the eldest son, left for New Hampshire, leaving fourteen-year-old Tristram Jr. the only remaining Coffin in Newbury. It is possible that Tristram was indentured to a local tradesman, as was common. It is also possible that his master was Henry Somerby, whose twenty-eight-year-old widow Judith married the twenty-one-year-old Tristram in 1654.

It was long believed that Tristram Jr. brought his young bride to the Coffin House in 1654. However, conclusive dendrochronology has since proven this house to date from 1678. Because we know that Judith inherited a substantial house and many possessions from her first husband, it is assumed that the Coffins set up housekeeping in another house on the lower green near the Parker River. It was in the other house that Judith and Tristram raised their ten children and her three Somerby children as well; later in their lives they moved to the new house on the upper green.

Tristram Jr. and Judith lived in the house until they died in 1704 and 1705 respectively. The house and land were inherited by their youngest son, Nathaniel, who had remained at home with his aging parents. In 1693 he had brought his bride, Sarah Brocklebank, to live in the house. Nathaniel and Sarah had eight children (all but one lived to adulthood), five of whom were born before the deaths of Tristram and Judith. Of their children, Enoch (1696-1728) and Samuel Brocklebank (1700-1727) both studied for the ministry at Harvard College. In account book #1, for the years 1710 through 1714 Nathaniel enters the money paid for Enoch's "Quarters expense." There is also an entry for "ye degree diner." Samuel started Harvard in 1714 and the expenses for his first two "quarter bills" are noted on the same page.

Nathaniel, like his father, appears to have combined a variety of activities in order to support his family. On many documents, such as land deeds, Nathaniel is listed as a merchant-tailor, as was his father. However, family account books indicate that he started the tanning business that would sustain the family into the 1800s. Like his father, he was prominent in Newbury affairs. He was a deacon of his church, he served the colony beyond the town as a representative to the General Court in 1719-1721, was Councillor to the Province in 1730, and Justice of the Peace in 1734.

In 1725, Nathaniel's son Joseph brought home his bride Margaret to set up housekeeping, and the house saw the start of another generation. When Joseph and Margaret moved in, Joseph's parents and three of his siblings were still living there. Margaret and Joseph had eight children (six survived to adulthood). Joseph and his son, Joshua, like the generations before them, engaged in a variety of activities to sustain the family. They continued in the tanning business, but also maintained tillage land, orchards, pasture, and livestock.

Both Nathaniel and Joseph were active in the local community. They held the office of Newbury town clerk consecutively from 1711 to 1773. The town's population continued to grow. The first census, taken in 1765, indicates that the town's population had reached 2,960. The town was an important agricultural community, but manufacturing enterprises were growing.

In 1755, Joseph's son Joshua married Sarah Bartlett and brought his bride back to the house where his parents continued to live. Joshua and Sarah had twelve children (eight survived to adulthood). Joshua and Sarah also took in apprentices. Historic New England has a copy of the 1772 indenture between a Daniel Mitchell of Wells, Maine, and the Coffins. The agreement is that the Coffins will teach Daniel "the art, trade, and mastery of a tanner...during the term of 5 years, seven months, and 75 days...and also to learn him to read and write legibly...and at expiration of term give him 2 good suits of apparel for all parts of his body, one for the Lord's day, the other for working days."

In 1785, the house which had for so many years seen three generations living as one family was legally divided. Edmund Coffin, one of Joshua's two sons, reached twenty-one and wanted his share of his deceased father's estate. Consequently, a division was made first between the two sons and their widowed mother, and after her death in 1798, between the two sons. Each had exclusive use of certain rooms, stairways, and cellars with right of passage through some of the other rooms. The "families" lived separately under one roof, using different kitchens and entertaining rooms. The house remained divided this way through the last generation of Coffins to occupy the house.

Edmund and Joseph Coffin legally divided the Coffin house in 1785, and it was their children, Joshua (1792-1864) and Lucy (1811-1893), who lived in their separate spaces through most of the nineteenth century. Joshua graduated from Dartmouth College in 1817 and taught school for many years, numbering among his pupils the poet John Greenleaf Whittier, who addressed to him a poem entitled "To My Old School-Master." Coffin was ardent in the cause of emancipation, and was one of the founders of the New England Anti-Slavery Society in 1832, serving as its first recording secretary. He published A Sketch of the History of Newbury, Newburyport, and West Newbury from 1635 to 1845, genealogies of the Woodman, Little, and Toppan families, and magazine articles. As an adult, Coffin lived for a time in the downstairs southwest room of the house. Meanwhile, Joshua's first cousin Lucy lived her whole life in the front range of the house.

After Lucy Coffin's death in 1893, the house passed to her sister Elizabeth's children. The family was well aware of the importance of a house that had remained so unchanged and in the same family for so many years, but was not interested in living in the house. A series of tenants and family members lived in the house for brief periods, but in 1929, Lucy's niece, Margaret (Coleman) Merriam, who had inherited both sides of the house, made the decision to give the house to Historic New England.

Another member of the Coffin family but descended from Nathaniel Coffin's brother Stephen is represented in the Coffin family papers. Abel Coffin was the son of Lemeul and Catherine Coffin. He and his son Abel H. Coffin were ship captains and traveled all over the world. The letters in this part of the collection include bits of information about family life in the early 1800s, ports of call, ship building, ocean crossings, funerals at sea, transportation, and the conjoined twins Chang and Eng Bunker, whom Abel Coffin "discovered" during one of his trips to Asia and brought back to the United States.

Sources

Material within MS010
"Coffin House History," Historic New England, last modified 2014, http://www.historicnewengland.org/historic-properties/homes/coffin-house/coffin-house-history
W. S. Appleton, Gatherings Toward a Genealogy of the Coffin Family (Boston: Press of David Clapp and Son, 1896)