Tristram Coffin

  General Notes:

Proud Mahaska, 1843-1900
By Semira Ann Hobbs Phillips

Samuel and John Coffin, like all the other Coffins in the United States, are descendants of Tristram and Diones Coffin, who came from England in 1642 and settled at Salisbury in Massachusetts. In 1660 Tristram Coffin and nine others purchased the island of Nantucket. There they settled in that year and not long after engaged in the whale-fishing business. Those Nantucket people followed that business successfully through several generations. They traversed every known sea, (I mean all the oceans) and sold their cargoes in every seaport in Europe and many other parts of the world. One visiting Nantucket to-day can see in those quaint old houses, relicts in the way of elegant furniture, paintings, china and silver ware brought by those whale-fishers to their wives, mothers, daughters and sisters. In course of time the little island of Nantucket became so thickly inhabited with Coffins and Maceys, and Gardners andStarbucks and Michells and Folgers and Russells and so forth, that they began to find homes and business in other parts of the western hemisphere. There is said to be twenty-five thousand persons in the United States who can trace their lineage directly to Tristram and Diones Coffin, those first settlers on that island. It is said also that all the Coffins in this country are of that family. One William Coffin, a great grandson of Tristram, and whose wife was Priscilla Paddock, emigrated to North Carolina not very long before the Revolutionary war. These were the ancestors of Samuel and John, whom I have been telling about. The Coffins are great people to keep track of their lineage and most of them reverence their ancestors, and many of the family names are kept going from generation to generation. Priscilla is a name common among the Coffins. I have heard that Priscilla Paddock was a very superior woman and of an excellent family, therefore in every generation of Coffins since her time there has been many Priscillas. Mrs. Priscilla Prine, of Oskaloosa, a very excellent and intelligent lady, is a daughter of John Coffin. Samuel Coffin was a Christian and died in peace at the age of seyenty-one years, honored and respected by all who knew him. The largest funeral procession ever seen in Mahaska county was said to be the one that followed the remains of Samuel Coffin to their last resting place in Forest cemetery.
Erastus and Thomas, sons of Samuel Coffin, own and occupy farms and have commodious residences not far from the old homestead where they were brought up.
Frank, another son, lives in Nebraska. I hear that Frank is not only a prosperous farmer, but is a man amongst men. Samuel, the youngest of that numerous
family, was a little boy when his father died, but now a tall, fine looking man, and people say is a veritable "chip off the old block.'' He lives in Colorado and is engaged
in railroading. I was not at all surprised to hear a good report of "little Sammy" as we used to call him, for I had reason to know that he was an honest and honorable little boy. '

Tristram married Dionis Stevens, daughter of Robert Stevens Esq and Unknown. (Dionis Stevens was born on 4 Mar 1609 in Brixton, England and died on 16 Oct 1676 in Nantucket, Nantucket, Massachusetts, USA.)