Coffin | |
---|---|
Current region | South West England New England Eastern Canada |
Earlier spellings | Coffyn |
Place of origin | Devon, England |
Estate(s) | Portledge |
Coffin is an English and French surname.
The House of Coffin is an ancient English family which originated in Devonshire. The Coffins have held a number of manors, the most notable of which is Portledge in Devon, England, which they held for over nine centuries. The progenitor of most of the American Coffins was Tristram Coffin, a Royalist, who came to Massachusetts from the Coffin family farm at Brixton, Devonshire in 1642. He was one of the original proprietors of Nantucket. Tristram Coffin's descendants include the Boston Brahmin, a group of elite families based in and around Boston. Many American Coffins are or were Quakers.
Nantucket is an island about 30 miles (48 km) south from Cape Cod. Together with the small islands of Tuckernuck and Muskeget, it constitutes the Town and County of Nantucket, a combined county/town government in the state of Massachusetts, USA. Nantucket is the southeasternmost town in both Massachusetts and the New England region. The name "Nantucket" is adapted from similar Algonquian names for the island.
John or Jon Holmes may refer to:
Freeman is a surname. Notable people with the surname include:
Graves is a surname of English origin. Its distribution within England is centered on Lincolnshire, followed in concentration by Lancashire, Yorkshire, Cumbria, and East Anglia. The surname is likely a variant of Grave with genitival or post-medieval excrescent -s. The surname Grave seems to have its possible origins in: 1. "Occupational name from Middle English greyve, grayve, greve 'steward bailif, manorial officer who managed the lord's demense farm, headman of a town or village', a borrowing from Old Scandinavian greifi 'earl, count". 2. "Locative name from Middle English grave "pit" ". 3. "Relationship name, possibly from the rare Middle English personal name Gre(y)vy, Gre(i)ve, Old Scandinavian Greifi, *Grefe, originally a nickname meaning 'earl, count".
Crane is a surname. The name is a derivative of "Cron" in Old English or is the English translation of the German "Krahn" or "Kranich." According to The Oxford Dictionary of Family Names in Britain & Ireland, "Cron," "Krahn" and "Kranich" all mean "crown" in both Old English and German respectively. According to the same source, "Crone" is also compared with "Crane", "Crown", "Cron" and "Crowne". In some places in Britain, "Crane", when used as a name, can also be a reference to a tall, slender man, similar to the bird, "Crane" or to someone with long legs. Both the modern English version of "Crane" and modern German versions of "Krahn" or "Kranich" are more commonly associated with the tall bird than with a crown and the Old English and Old German translations have become less common.
Powell is a surname. It is a patronymic form of the Welsh name Hywel, with the prefix ap meaning "son of", together forming ap Hywel, or "son of Hywel". It is an uncommon name among those of Welsh ancestry. It originates in a dynasty of kings in Wales and Brittany in the 9th and 10th century, and three Welsh royal houses of that time onwards. The House of Tudor, one of the Royal houses of England, also descended from them.
Armitage is a surname. It may originate from West Yorkshire, England, during the Anglo-Saxon period.
Thorne is a surname of English origin, originally referring to a thorn bush. Thorne is the 1,721st most common surname name in the United States.[1]
Tristan, Tristram or Tristen is a given name derived from Welsh drust, influenced by the French word triste and Welsh/Cornish/Breton trist, both of which mean "bold" or "sad", "sorrowful".
Harper is an English, Scottish, and Irish surname that is also commonly used as a unisex given name in the United States.
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.
Hunt is an occupational surname related with hunting, originating in England and Ireland. In Estonia, the surname Hunt is also very common, meaning wolf in the Estonian language.
Archie is a given name, almost exclusively masculine and a diminutive of Archibald. It may refer to:
Fox is a surname originating in England and Ireland. Variants include Foxe and Foxx.
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.
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.
A coffin is a box for interring a corpse.
Micajah Coffin was an American mariner, triangle trader, and politician who served as a member of the Massachusetts House of Representatives.
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.