Coffin is an English and Frenchsurname. The progenitors of most of the American Coffins were Tristram Coffin Sr. and his wife Dionis Stevens, who came to Massachusetts from the Coffin family farm at Brixton in Butlas Parish, Devonshire, England in 1642. Tristram Coffin Sr. was one of the original proprietors of Nantucket.
Tristram and Dionis Coffin's descendants include some of the Boston Brahmin, a class of wealthy, educated, elite members of Boston society in the 19th century. Many descendants initially settled at seaports on the eastern coast of the United States and in Canada. A large number of families became active in the slave trade through the triangle trading of whale oil and other raw materials. They invested in the trade, built or owned vessels for the trade, commanded the vessels as captains or masters, or worked on the crews. Some became experts in international trade, establishing business relationships around the world as the slavery economy flourished in the colonies and in the states.
Other American Coffins became Quakers who adopted anti-slavery principles and in 1778, prohibited members of the Friends Society from being enslavers. Some of the Coffins who are known for their work as abolitionists include Joshua Coffin, Lucretia Coffin Mott, Martha Coffin Wright, Levi and Catherine (White) Coffin Jr., Vestal Coffin, and Addison Coffin.
By 1860, some descendants of Tristram and Dionis Coffin Sr. had migrated to the south. Coffin families can be found in each southern state. Most were enslavers [citation needed] with occupations such as planters, reverends or ministers, doctors, judges, lawyers, slave traders or merchants. By the time the US Civil War broke out in April 1861, Coffin cousins were fighting on both sides of the war.
William Sloane Coffin Sr., American businessman, president of the board of trustees of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, founder of the Hearth and Home Corporation
Zenas Coffin, one of the most successful of Nantucket's eighteenth-century whaling merchants and triangle traders
Coffin Family, cursed family in the novel Coffins by Rodman Philbrick
Doctor Coffin: actor Del Manning fakes his death to operate a series of Hollywood mortuaries while fighting crime at night as Doctor Coffin. Written by Perley Poore Sheehan, the stories were originally published in the pulp magazine Thrilling Detective from 1932 to 1933.
Enoch Coffin, title character of the Lovecraftian fiction anthology Encounters with Enoch Coffin, by W. H. Pugmire and Jeffrey Thomas. Enoch is a painter/sculptor who seeks out the supernatural as inspiration for his art.
Mistress Coffin, murder victim in the novel The Strange Death of Mistress Coffin by Robert Begiebing. Set in New England in 1648, it is apparently based on an actual unsolved murder from that period.
This page lists people with the surnameCoffin. If an internal link intending to refer to a specific person led you to this page, you may wish to change that link by adding the person's given name(s) to the link.
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Some members of the colonial Coffin family were whalers, agents, merchants, and traders who were prominent during the triangular trade in the United States and Canada. Coffin ship owners, captains, masters, and crew men operated triangle and bilateral trade ships out of Nantucket, Massachusetts, US eastern seaports, and Canadian seaports from the 17th to 19th centuries.
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Elizabeth Rebecca Coffin (1850–1930) was an American artist, educator and philanthropist who is known for her paintings of Nantucket, Massachusetts. Well-educated and accomplished, she was one of the "New Women" of the 19th century who explored opportunities not traditionally available to women. She was the first person in the United States to earn a Master of Fine Arts degree and was the first woman admitted to the Hague Academy of Fine Arts. She opened a school in Nantucket that had been only open to men and offered several types of trade and crafts work courses to both genders.
John Coffin was a British army officer, merchant, judge, enslaver and political figure in New Brunswick. He represented King's County in the Legislative Assembly of New Brunswick from 1785 to 1816.
Tristram Coffin was an immigrant to Massachusetts from England. In 1659 he led a group of investors that bought Nantucket from Thomas Mayhew for thirty pounds and two beaver hats. He became a prominent citizen of the settlement. A great number of his descendants became prominent in North American society, and many were involved in the later history of Nantucket during and after its heyday as a whaling center. Almost all notable Americans with roots in Nantucket are descended from Tristram Coffin, although Benjamin Franklin was an exception.
Tristram Potter Coffin was an American folklorist and leading scholar of ballad texts in the 20th century. Coffin spent the bulk of his career at the University of Pennsylvania, where he was a professor of English and a co-founder of the Folklore Department. He was the author of 20 books and more than 100 scholarly articles and reviews.
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Phebe Ann Hanaford was a Christian Universalist minister and biographer who was active in championing universal suffrage and women's rights. She was the first woman ordained as a Universalist minister in New England and the first woman to serve as chaplain to the Connecticut General Assembly.
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Mary Coffin Starbuck was a Quaker leader from the Massachusetts Bay Colony. She and her husband, Nathaniel Starbuck, were the first English couple to marry on Nantucket and were parents to the first white child born on the island. She supported her husband's efforts to run a trading post, which grew into a large mercantile business with the advent of the whaling trade. Unusual for the time, she was a prominent leader in civic and religious matters. She had ten children and her family members were leaders in the Quaker meeting.
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