Joshua Coffin (October 12, 1792 – June 24, 1864) was a historian, an American antiquary, and an

abolitionist Abolitionism, or the abolitionist movement, is the movement to end slavery. In Western Europe and the Americas, abolitionism was a historic movement that sought to end the Atlantic slave trade and liberate the enslaved people. The British ...

Life

Coffin was born to Joseph and Judith (née Toppan) Coffin in

Newbury, Massachusetts Newbury is a town in Essex County, Massachusetts, USA. The population was 6,716 at the 2020 census. Newbury includes the villages of Old Town (Newbury Center), Plum Island and Byfield. Each village is a precinct with its own voting district, ...

October 12, 1792 in the

Coffin House The Coffin House is a historic Colonial American house, currently estimated to have been constructed circa 1678. It is located at 14 High Road, Newbury, Massachusetts and operated as a non-profit museum by Historic New England. The house is open o ...

. He graduated at

Dartmouth College Dartmouth College (; ) is a private research university in Hanover, New Hampshire. Established in 1769 by Eleazar Wheelock, it is one of the nine colonial colleges chartered before the American Revolution. Although founded to educate Native ...

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 co-founders of the

New England Anti-Slavery Society The Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society, headquartered in Boston, was organized as an auxiliary of the American Anti-Slavery Society in 1835. Its roots were in the New England Anti-Slavery Society, organized by William Lloyd Garrison, editor of ...

in 1832, being its first recording secretary. From 1834 to 1837, Coffin was the manager of the American Anti-Slavery Society. He published ''The History of Ancient Newbury'' (Boston, 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

, his ancestral home; in a tiny study housed within an ell of the house, Joshua wrote his ''History of Ancient Newbury''.

Family life

On December 2, 1817, Coffin married his first wife Clarissa Dutch of Exeter, New Hampshire. They had two children together: Sarah Bartlett (born Nov. 21, 1818) and Lucia Tappan (born Sept. 6, 1820). His first wife passed away in 1821. On April 20, 1835, Coffin married his second wife Mrs. Anna Wiley Chase, of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. They had three children together: Elizabeth Wiley (born Jan. 26, 1836), Anna Lapsley (born July 17, 1838), and Mary Hale (born Dec. 29, 1840). Their three children were born in Philadelphia.

Death

Coffin died on June 24, 1864, in

''The New England Historical and Genealogical Register''
/ref> and is buried at the Newbury First Parish Burying Ground.

Notes

External links

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by Coffin to Lydia Maria Child

References