My Genealogy Hound

Hon. Charles Coffin is one of the principal Democrats of Northeast Arkansas, and a man well known over the entire State. He has all the antecedents which combine to produce a man stanch and true to the real Democracy, and for several years past has been an earnest advocate of Democratic principles in this State. He was born at Rogersville, Hawkins County, Tenn., on the 23d of April, 1842, and, with his parents, removed to Knoxville, Tenn., when but five years of age. He there remained until December, 1865, when he removed with his mother and brothers to Memphis, and resided there until July, 1869, when the family came to Lawrence County, his present home. The ancestry of Mr. Coffin goes back over 200 years to Tristam Coffin, an English yeoman, who came to Newberryport, Mass., in 1642, but being driven from there on account of his religious belief — a sympathy for persecuted Quakers — went and settled the Island of Nantucket. He is the ancestor of all of that name in America. The family celebrated the two-hundredth anniversary of his death in 1881. Mr. Coffin, with a brother and two cousins from Tennessee, were the only representatives present from the Southern branches of the family, and there were nearly 600 present. Mr. Coffin’s grandfather, the Rev. Charles Coffin, D. D., a Presbyterian minister, and a graduate of Harvard, emigrated from Newberryport, in 1804, to Greeneville, Tenn., where he founded and was president of Greeneville College until 1827. He held the same position in the East Tennessee University, at Knoxville, from 1827 until 1836, and died at Greeneville, in 1852. He was the educator of many of the most prominent, influential and distinguished men of the South, of the last generation, one of whom was the late Gen. Grandison D. Royston, of this State. His portrait is frescoed in the ceiling of the library room in the capitol at Nashville, as one of the pioneer litterati of Tennessee. Mr. Coffin’s father, Charles Hector Coffin, was born on the 24th of April, 1804, at Newberryport, Mass., and was a merchant of Knoxville, an active railroad man, and under Gov. Campbell’s administration was president of the branch Bank of Tennessee, at Rogersville. He died at Columbia, Tenn., on the 19th of June, 1854. He had married Miss Eliza Park, a native of Knoxville, Tenn., born on the 22d day of September, 1811, and the daughter of James Park, who was of Irish birth, and a merchant by trade. Mr. Park died in 1853, at the age of eighty-four years. His wife, who was formerly Sophia Moody, of Wilmington, Del., died in 1862, when over eighty years of age. She was the mother of twelve children, of whom Rev. James Park, D. D., a distinguished Presbyterian minister at Knoxville, is one. Mrs. Coffin (mother of the subject of this sketch) died in this county, in 1874, and lies buried at Knoxville, Tenn. Charles Coffin has been not so much a student of books as an independent thinker. He went through the freshman and sophomore years in the Tennessee University, at Knoxville, and the junior year at Princeton, N. J., but the war closed his school life. He was a Southerner by birth, his home was there, all his interests and his heart were with “his people.” He believed neither in secession nor coercion, but seeing his people in trouble and danger, his warm heart went out in sympathy for them, and he left the college, gave up all that promised to be a brilliant literary career, for he had all the requisites which only needed to be molded, cultured and trained, and resolutely set his face homeward, where he was eagerly welcomed. He enlisted as a private on the 10th of August, 1861, when but nineteen years of age, in Capt. Ben M. Branner’s cavalry company (at Cumberland Gap), afterwards Company I, Second Tennessee Cavalry, under Col. Henry M. Ashby. Mr. Coffin was in Gen. Zollicoffer’s command, and participated in all his engagements until the latter’s death at Mill Springs, Ky., on the 19th of January, 1862. Mr. Coffin was afterwards in the campaigns in Kentucky, under Gen. Kirby Smith, participating in the battle of Murfreesboro, December 31, 1862, and North Carolina, January 1, 1863, and on the 19th, 20th and 21st of March, 1865, he was at Bentonville, N. C, where Gens. Joseph E. Johnston and Sherman fought their last great battle. He was in the fight between Wheeler and Kilpatrick, February 11, 1805, at Aikin, S. C., and with Johnston in Wheeler’s cavalry corps during the campaigns of the Carolinas in the last mentioned year. He was captured at Somerset, Ky., under Brig.-Gen. John Pegrani, March 31, 1863, and exchanged at City Point, Va., on the 22d of April; was captured again at Lancaster, Ky., on the 31st of August, 1863, while under Col. John S. Scott, of Louisiana, and was a prisoner at Camp Chase, Ohio, for seven months, and the eight months following at Fort Delaware. He was exchanged at Savannah, Ga., on the 12th day of November, 1864. He was sergeant major of his regiment, but surrendered and was paroled at Charlotte, N. C., under the cartel between Johnston and Sherman, May 11, 1865, as adjutant, in which position he was then acting. Mr. Coffin was a grocery merchant at Memphis, Tenn., from March, 1867, to July, 1869, and was engaged in mercantile pursuits at Clover Bend, in this county, from July, 1869, to March, 1871. In 1873 he edited the Observer, at Pocahontas, Ark., until August, 1874, and also taught school in that time. In September, 1874, he was licensed to practice law and located at Walnut Ridge, where he has since resided. In 1876 he was co-editor of the Little Rock Gazette, but one year later he resumed the practice of his profession, at Walnut Ridge. Mr. Coffin is a Democrat, of Whig antecedents, having been reared by Whig parents. He became a Democrat after the war, and in 1873 was elected from Randolph County, as a Democrat, to the extraordinary session of the legislature, and served eighteen days during the Brooks-Baxter war, at the call of Governor Baxter. In 1878 he was elected prosecuting attorney, and re-elected in 1880 for the Third judicial district. In the summer of 1888 he was a candidate for the Democratic nomination to Congress for the First Arkansas district, against Hon. W. H. Cate, of Jonesboro, and gave the latter a close and exciting race. He was afterwards given an unsolicited and unanimous nomination as representative to the State legislature (being not even a candidate) by the Democratic convention of his county, and won the fight by a good majority. He made the canvass as a “straight Democrat,” against the combined Republican, Union Labor and Wheeler opposition, and wears the laurels of a hard earned victory. In the legislative session following (1888-89) he was a strong advocate and leader of the effort to organize the Democratic members of the legislature for Democratic purposes. His heart was in the work and he labored indefatigably and gallantly for the sake of all the principles he holds most dear. He was chairman of the house committee on penitentiary, also a member of the house committee on railroads, ways and means and education. Mr. Coffin introduced several important bills, among them the following: To regulate the practice of pharmacy; to inspect cattle for butchering purposes in cities of first and second class; to repeal features of the labor contract law (Mansfield’s Digest, Section 4441), which makes valid contracts for labor made beyond the limits of State. He also had the honor of framing the State Democratic platform of 1888, in which the State canvass and victory were won from the Union Labor and Republican parties combined. Mr. Coffin owns a farm of eighty acres near Walnut Ridge, and is a strong advocate of grass farming, being one of the first to introduce clover into this section of the State. He was baptized in infancy, but is not a member of the Church, though a Presbyterian in his views, and assists in maintaining ministers and church enterprises. Mr. Coffin is a member of that large class of mankind who have never seen fit, from various causes, to enter the “conjugal state of felicity,” although a previous biographer has dryly remarked that “he is young enough to reform.” He has been known to say, in reference to his loneliness and absence of a life companion, that “a Coffin is the last thing on earth a woman wants.’’ Mr. Coffin has for his motto: “Never do anything to be ashamed of.” His style of oratory is earnest, fluent and pointed, speaks impromptu and gets at the “meat” of the question. He is an honorable, upright citizen in all that the terms imply.