The Coffyn-Coffin Dynasty

By Marijane Coffyn

The Coffyn/Coffin Dynasty is a genealogical recapitulation of fifteen generations born in the United States. At first, I was going to title it The Coffin Saga Continues, but R. Gardner and Louis Coffin expired. I fell in love with a wonderful culmination of people belonging to my husband's family. I added the years before the stepping on US soil. There are millions more of people out there to be added. One can enjoy reading cover to cover about so many important individuals such as presidents, a Union Station president, aviators, college owners, and patented people besides farmers, teachers, doctors, etc. It is not the norm of "born and died" information.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Christian Faith Publishing, Inc.
• Release date: Jul 8, 2023
• ISBN: 9781685700164

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The Coffyn-Coffin Dynasty

Marijane Coffyn

ISBN 978-1-68570-015-7 (paperback)

ISBN 978-1-68570-016-4 (digital)

Copyright © 2023 by Marijane Coffyn

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods without the prior written permission of the publisher. For permission requests, solicit the publisher via the address below.

Christian Faith Publishing

832 Park Avenue

Meadville, PA 16335

www.christianfaithpublishing.com

Registration Number: TXu 2-271-624

Printed in the United States of America

Table of Contents

The Coffyn/Coffin Saga Dynasty Continues

Preface

Introduction

Portledge, Devonshire, England

The Beginnings of Coffyn Structure

The Coffyn/Coffin Genealogy Structure

The United States of America: Coffyn/Coffin Genealogical Structure

Bibliography

Places of Information Visited

About the Author

The Coffyn/Coffin Dynasty

Post Tenebras Speramushermen De Lu Mine

After the darkness there is hope the light will dawn

Coffyn/Coffin Motto

Marijane Coffyn

The Coffyn/Coffin Saga Dynasty Continues

Time has gone by since Will Gardner wrote the Coffin Saga, and we spoke how I would write a continuance saga, as our leg of the journey stopped with Grandpa George Coffin leaving Nantucket. Therefore, our Coffin family's data was not included in the anticipated publications. My family's Pennsylvania genealogical publication also ended with my dad in WWII with only my mother tabulated. I was really interested in genealogy going in the forties to New York City Library to their Genealogy department. It certainly has been a short journey for some of us and a wee bit longer for others since that day in 1946. Years later, I was contacted by his nephew writing that Will had expired…so that meant that I would have to continue the Coffin Saga. Because Will Gardner had the Coffin Saga title, I have taken the title The Coffyn/Coffin Dynasty. The dictionary relates that a dynasty is a family that maintains great power, wealth, or position for many years. It stated with a genealogist in Demaline, England, of a large mainstream of Portledge Estate members to a genealogist in Massachusetts reiterating in the 1800s. Our family consists of the twelfth, thirteenth, and fourteenth living generations of the United States of America. Some families have a fifteenth living generation! When I tried to contact Louis Coffin, as I had sent our data on a postcard to be interlocked into the 1884 Nantucket Reunion genealogy extension, which Little Grandpa attended, I was contacted by his relative that Louis had expired! This definitely meant I had to write to tell of the wonderful individual Buddy Coffyn and his family. I had been oblivious to the 1959 Nantucket Reunion as I had become a widow with three children ages two, three, and five. It was before the Vietnam War and somewhat a battle for a woman to hold steadfastly to anything and everything. Life's journey would maintain my full attention. Thinking of my journey, thoughts go through my mind of our singing On the Road Again and how we'd attest to another adventure!

It was my intent to write genealogically for my eldest, Charles J. Chip Coffyn, and his brother, Clifford J. Coffyn, as there was confusion as to the family name having been changed by his dad to Coffyn. In statistics, the name Coffin is the most popular American web site with 45,900,000 pages in 2014. These are pages worldwide: Canada 913, France 491, UK 325, Australia 18 and on and on. In the 1600s, the name started with Tristram Coffyn, but when reported, they used an i, although he signed with a y as magistrate! There are differences in spelling more so because of intellectual beings. There have been f's turned into p's in the beginning, and I have encountered people who spell it Cofeen! I do not take the Internet as an authentic source but a checkmate type of standing. My knowledge comes from individuals, historical, libraries, schools, newspapers, cemeteries, funeral homes, etc. Guess because I'm from the Great Generation, books are the best to me. Unbeknownst to me, the true reason was Buddy, born Charles Frederick Coffin Jr., wanted his eldest named Tristram. I guess all along, he felt he would change back to the proper name of Coffyn, the founder of our family in the United States of America in the 1600. He told me of the Doomsday Book along with another book being in his home. (Only one document showed up.) Alas, Chip at age five was with his dad (and grandfather holding the safety line) when his dad was killed at work. It's ironic that Buddy before this wanted to buy the new developed aerial lift but his dad would not go for the expense! Buddy had designed a boom truck years before to hoist heavy trees and transport to the mill. Buddy was not designated to scale this tree but an employee. He hurried from his other job, which was picking up early in the morning, a Swedish shipment on the docks for one of the first importers of Norway culture. (He probably felt the guy was not that accomplished to soar. The guy [a policeman] was devastated by the outcome.) His assignment was to scale a very tall, diseased Dutch elm tree, which cracked, split, and toppled over with him locked in his leg irons and safety harness. Many telephone communications workers would stop in to talk as they had a fear of their leg irons, never contemplating that his five-year-old would be there at that time in his life. The accident was on the street in Dobbs Ferry, Westchester County, New York, on October 13, 1959. He was at the age of thirty-three (with a doctor reiterating to us the month before that he looked like he was only twenty-one). It was just blocks from where he was born and our family residence, in front of the entrance gates for Colonel Brown's estate, whose wife was present at his birth in 1926. The hospital, across from our home, had me seeing his boots only through the operating room door. Buddy's Tree Company is still in existence as Coffin Tree Surgery Company. (I could not bear to take over his company with two small sons to inherit without their dad's guidance, as we had made a decision and were intending to move soon to the Adirondacks.) When Buddy expired, he was acknowledged by Cornell University as a great conservationist as well as a tree surgeon. It was only during research that I found the whole story why they kept contacting him with students (learning that the Cornell University founder was a Coffin relation).

I did witness some outstanding exploits of Buddy. The feelings within me are the same when I read about some cousins of his, knowing he was cut from the same cloth. The week before his demise, with his family, we had been with his friend Ed Jenner, who recently moved from Tarrytown to Connecticut, and his two boys at the Danbury Fair. One son, Bruce Jenner, went on to be an Olympian, and the other son expired in an auto accident.

This really started a saga of the paths of an early American Heritage family entwining with all sorts of people from all walks of life. Buddy had returned from WWII to a company on verge of bankruptcy. He turned it around from the company, which his mother helped to progress by taking family to her family's Ireland residence during the thirties and the Depression. She was the financial personality who kept the home and business persevering as well as a humanitarian, taking in other children to help them out even though she wasn't well and had her own small child. Because Chip then left for heaven in July of 2007 in another tragic fall accident in California on his way back to his new home at Bainbridge Island, Washington, this book shall contain more deepening thoughts than just a genealogical epic.

After I came home from Buddy's military funeral, I sat at his oak roll-top desk and wrote to the children about our love so the children would be aware of their legacy. I then witnessed my daughter Jane all dressed in her favorite dress and her two brothers dressed for dinner. Jane told her brothers to come on with her. She had taken her big brother's hand and her younger one's, the one whom people thought was her twin. She said she was taking them down the street to Grandpa's to get their daddy back. My mother took a picture of them later, which was known as our famous portrait, as we had ten volumes of photographs. There was a photography studio erected in the attic for me, as I started photographing in the thirties, meeting many celebrities in vaudeville and modeling. It made me realize about our country and the younger generations' treatment of people's demise and tradition. (Little did I know that a former ex would take all those volumes, antiques, furniture, clothing, legacies from them!) My realization about the earth was how people with stability and integrity were becoming scarce. The worst realization without Chip or Buddy was that people now contacted people and then threw them away into the air or into the water, all because the earth was shrinking from such overpopulation. I remember my mother explained wars as a way God evened out the overgrowth! Reading about some other cousins' lives made me fall in love seeing people somewhat left in limbo as we were. There were times, I so envied the couples that were together and somewhat despised those who would fight and just divorce or walk away. I felt the despondency of the children. It made me appreciate that Buddy and I had been so greatly in love, and that was sealed forever. So it was that the boys envied others having a dad and them not realizing how precious a gift they had. I noticed this in Cliff when I went to his ball games. Also, my best friend, whom Buddy and I drove to a New York City hospital for her son's birth, she and her husband stayed through thick and thin after meeting during WWII. Their two children went off to adulthood lives and then they finally divorced. Their children, one a doctor, the other with FBI, were a credit to mankind. They kept a balanced life, and it showed. One time, Cliff told me how he even envied his brother having had so many hours with his dad, being the eldest. When I see how some have different types of marriages or are divorced with no real connections as to being one, I feel sorry for their children, as from my experience that all this is true. I saw many examples of how children are really gypped from the lives of parents being divorced.

When going to some types of psychological meetings, I have witnessed that some doctors feel widowed women are the same as divorced. This is definitely not true. I can say that as I have experienced both types of lives. The widowed woman has something special which she can communicate with her children as well as touch base with the person whom she loved but went to heaven.

From our personal memories, it is quite evident that our family has journeyed into and passed so many different types of journeys in life. The children went ahead of those of their age. After some tearful experiences with Buddy's love, we survived. Then there was the tragic accident which we passed through a journey that had many, many cascades then Chip's tragic accident which the week before I experienced talking with him, as I had with his dad. It also had the poem I wrote on our tombstone. Chip asked, and I told how I composed it when I was sixteen. It said, I believe that God above created You for me to love. He picked you out of all the rest because he knew I'd love thee best. It evolved in tone for the children as well, loving and caring personalities who cherished life and love down their paths. Buddy and Chip were fine specimens of manhood, pleasing in appearance—slim, six foot two—with eyes to their souls and their conversations careful, accurate, and patient, and they were so successful in their professions.

In my twilight years, I wonder why my three children needed to experience their fifties in situations because of our country's position in so many tangents. It's not just adapting to one's environment with no conscience of tradition. Buddy, I'm sure, would have been a political figure helping mankind if he had gone forward. He was a diamond in the rough from his family. Many people, some professionals, attested to that fact to my parents when our relationship started. It was definitely reconfirmed at his funeral. The aspirations he had were consumed with his death.

It felt so interesting and comfortable with finding so many families that experienced the journey, and no one has really put the family all together…from all walks of life. How awesome as the younger generation says. They too like to read about some of the exploits, especially the women who were left out in the first Nantucket Reunion. I became so engrossed in the 1700s and 1800s, as though I was incarnated into their worlds. I loved the stories of California, Hawaii, Colorado, Oregon, and New Brunswick and just loved their families, some quirks and all, realizing the love I had for the Coffyn/Coffin dynasty made it a different kind of autobiography.

These words on the pages are not conformed to the usual perspective, maybe because of losing my mother just after the traumatic death of my husband and no siblings, maybe because I was left with the tremendous responsibility of three small children at age twenty-nine, whereas Buddy and I had been looking forward to age thirty and a lesser concentration on life by that time! My husband and I had talked how we would soon have more time to be together more completely as the children would enter school. We had just experienced Chipper's beginning of kindergarten, where we drove the car behind the school bus so he could understand it was okay to go off in another person's vehicle. We talked about a second family of at least two wee folks. He was always saying how he had no regrets of life but one. That was if he had known how happy he would have been married, he would not have lost years in courtship and engagement, as he had become the happiest he had ever been. I reiterated that if we didn't have that time to save money, we might have struggled more like our friends were doing. So it was a plus, a good thing, we experienced what we did in courtship. We went winters to the Adirondacks skiing and to Florida at New Year's on the warm beach. Hardly anyone was at Jupiter Beach, only a few people. We experienced Palm Beach, living on our level of life. We talked about death and no regrets nor do-overs of anything. Maybe he wouldn't have gone to war at age sixteen, as he had done. He didn't wish his sons to ever endure that experience of his life, although Chip, because of the Cuban threat, experienced the air raid drills in Florida. When going back to Westchester, he would reiterate, I'll get my sister and come through the woods in the back and meet you and Cliff under the stairs in the basement. He always thought about this because his dad had always said when leaving, You're the man of the house until I get home. Buddy chose to change his name's spelling, so as not to have the name looking like a casket and for friends killed ordering their casket. There was constant joking throughout his life of his name. (Life was so wonderful together with such a great family of wee folk. It was Don't stop the world, we don't want to get off!)

Never in my wildest dreams would I believe I would encounter life's episodes as many deviations of life. Those wee folk grew older through the concepts and lives having more questions at ages forty-five through fifty. There was loneliness, deviation, solitude, anxiety, and summation of expectancy. All would have sent a townie personality into a tailspin. The intrigue and mayhem could be attributed to a modern novel on the screen. This book has been composed in an older lady's attitude, not an internal acquisition but a hands-on execution. The numbering of births and families has been a greater task. Everyone, when added, had to be renumbered manually to alter not only the birth date but the family's number listed on pages onward. Research, in continued manner, progressed into the centennial years to automatically add or subtract efficiently. When another genealogist remarked that they had software to make rewriting easier, I reiterated that eight thousand reentries with another eight at family designation was not an option to me after so many years.

So the name and having a birth or death certificate for each person would make me have to be a millionaire to afford stringent documentation. I got my mother's birth certificate years ago for $2; now in one instance in 2000, because of the economy, the request cost $50 for a certificate in California of a distant cousin. So they didn't look it up anymore as we had done earlier in Florida, but one had to hire a researcher. This took more time. (Now I observed they researched on the Internet, and printing was not charged, as it was not copyrighted and were e-books!) Some would find their loved ones mentioned in their last place of residency, hoping that they may continue. It was with this declaration that I started with my family line (branch), and the genealogical librarian, whom I designated Lorraine Lentsch as my genealogical mentor, said I should have others, not just a single line. It is that I delved into reading many books and writing many, many letters to relatives using the phone directory and section last person had connotation. With the spelling being different at times in some families made it devious at times. Probably this due to the person's stage of illiteracy. My Mentor also brought up how dates will differ because of calendar. At first, I started to correct, but then it got to be a bigger task, so there may be some that have a deviation in dates. I do not profess that everything is exact, but I am only human; mistakes were made and corrected, which took me hours to be complacent.

This is a book brought about for the children, grandchildren, and now great-grandchildren. The thirteenth, fourteenth, and fifteenth generations born in America are Americans, no prefix before—strictly Yankees as other countries call us, a melting pot of many immigrants, past and recent, only the flying and respect of our American flag…no other. Our environment is turning so crazily these days, especially to the Great Generation Brokaw who made the television connation. When they said December 21, 2012, shall be the end of the world, it reminded me of when I was young and the Chicken Little story, as well as the year 2000 would never come! I do believe it is the end of the world as we know it. Our children and grandchildren shall have to deal with all the climate changes, and just doing it in our country will not solve the problem as we are on a circle sphere! The domination of females over males really creates crazily debilitated children rearing and traditional love as we know it, the lasting forever type, the one where you love someone more than yourself and it comes back to you doubly. Buddy, when my daughter was born, said he could now enjoy being with me in my childhood, the years he had missed! Christians believe love will always be around—real love. It was in my younger days that one's religion was a personal matter, as our forefathers practiced, some here because of religious persecution. Likewise, you never committed whom you voted. It is a personal decision as one votes for a person who has the best qualifications and experience. (That, in politics, should be strictly of a personal and private nature, as it has always been, no display nor mention of same.)

There are others who are looking forward to this book, who are gratified that I have taken so much time to investigate even the miniscule personality. I've been saddened at all the children who expired. I am reminded of words of a notable lady, Dale Evans Rogers, who lost her child: Be happy with the time you spent on earth with them, not saddened by the ending. This is true. Her husband, Roy, I had known and was thrilled that as a child, he put me up on Trigger. I read this book of hers when expecting my daughter. The rose between two thorns was her dad's expression. At a time the month before her arrival, we endured a blackened family episode, which I shall not elaborate. It made the bond between her dad and I stronger. We always remember how the sky was so spectacular when she was born. Plus, it was December, and the happy thoughts helped years later after constantly finding gifts all over in nooks and crannies after my mother expired helping me shovel snow. (Note: Just after us, Mike Todd Jr.'s wife died the same way!)

We did believe in Christmas. It kept life going. December was a time at which Buddy, early on, brought great happiness to our family with Christmas tradition. The word believe helped with his daughters' Christmas when they lost their dad, and ironically, Macy's Parade and theme Believe extended as Macy's owner was related to Buddy! There is a story of his Chip and St. Nicholas tradition, when he was bullied at school for believing. This book probably shall be a time to understand for all and close the book and start life anew in the twilight years, appreciating every day and every episode of life as endearment.

Please, if I did not continue your branch, I do hope you have the jumping-off spot to continue to write your own story. We are all truly related in personality, romanticism, patriotism, and aspirations with a thirst to live life—all the ingredients to share a wonderful inheritance, to live each day in a richer capacity. At this time of my life, I am so grateful for the support of the friends of Chip, Jane, and Cliff. The world is somewhat in turmoil, but these three families and their children, the thirteenth generation born here, have the nostalgic Golden Rule in their lives to help others as Good Samaritans, who need to believe and have common sense, a life filled instead of half-empty! They have family first convictions and Do unto others as you would have them do unto you as basic American ideals.

Their granddad was sixteen years when he went to South Pacific WWII, a tall (6'2"), silent chap. When I had become ill on a fishing episode, he told me the tale how his mom, when he was in service, had sent him cheese which he put in his pocket. He kept eating feeling ill in the Pacific while under siege on a landing craft, he left to run onto the beach among the gunfire near the dead and wounded buddies. During other episodes, he told about building a church in the Philippines and then going home and being in Santa Barbara and feeling he'd like to return and live there. (Amazing that years later, his family would also fall in love with California!) That further on in his life, he wanted us to homestead Alaska, but we had made the decision to live in the Adirondacks near White Face Mountain. I learned he was the youngest of his unit. I learned all this when his commanding officer came to the funeral from Boston and from his buddies from Pennsylvania, as he never reiterated about his experiences. Amazing that a funeral helps to tell of the good that is often buried with the bones. I knew in my heart at that time that the town had lost its future mayor. I wished he could have enjoyed that episode. I did enjoy when two women came and told how he had remained faithful, that they had tried with no success. Always in my heart, I knew he was always faithful.

Once and the last time he came from a hunting trip, he came back to my Aunt Frances's estate outside West Point where I was staying. He came back because he said he felt he was missing something important with Chip and me, that I was always up to something worthwhile. He hated the cheating going on with a friend on the hunting trip.

This is the story of Charles F. Buddy Coffyn; devoted wife, Marijane; eldest son, Charles J. Chip; C. Jane, Daddy's little girl; and the youngest son, Clifford, the excelling athlete of the family—a family consisting of the twelfth and thirteenth generations born in America and all born in New York State. All but one was born in Dobbs Ferry, Westchester County, New York. The exception was the mother born in Orange County, Goshen (Middletown Horton Memorial Emergency) and having grown up in Tarrytown, the Land of Sleepy Hollow. A love story ending with quality years and not quantity, living by the Golden Rule, to do unto others as you would have them do unto you. A love story that showed Buddy, a volunteer fireman, wearing his pajamas with fireman's garb over them the night before, saving a fellow fireman from falling off the roof and his daughter (Daddy's girl) somehow slipping in between us in our bed, sharing the last night, and the youngest one going on his last Christmas tree business trip to New Brunswick, the week before sharing hours (as his mother couldn't bear to leave him home with his grandmother as he had a serious problem in May which his dad shared with him). Of course, the eldest child shared his last minutes on earth. The youngest was in the kitchen, playing, when his mother said, Something's happening to your dad, and he needs us! She picked him up, put on his jacket, and as they went out the back door, they surprisingly encountered a police car pulling up! She remembered getting in and going downtown, seeing the crowd by an ambulance—not getting out—but continuing back up to the hospital emergency rooms and then seeing Buddy's boots in a crack of the door in a room. Time went blank, and she remembered being home with Martha DeMichele and then her mother and dad coming in from the Maryland jobsite. Then there were extraterrestrial encounters she didn't relate as she felt they would think she was crazy. Buddy, the month before, went over with her about death from an article in the Farm Journal magazine. She wrote a letter to her children to convey the happenings and placed it in his oak desk for the children to read in later years. She remembered the two women who traveled a great distance from Adirondacks to tell her that Buddy remained faithful to her when others on the hunting trip did not. Impressive to her was Buddy's South Pacific commander traveling from Massachusetts, along with his fellow Navy buddies from Pennsylvania. She mainly kept her eyes on him in the casket, mainly observing and not making chatty conversation, until the last gun salute at the gravesite. Then life became very still and quiet, looking out their half Dutch door alone at the people going by. Her mother kept close tabs on her as a Scarsdale mom lost her husband and she put her two children in pajamas, then sat in the car with the motor running and the garage door closed! Sad but true!

The Coffyn Saga starts in AD 900 and the 1066 Battle of Hastings in England then the 1199 period during the reign of King John of England to 1642 with Tristram Coffyn becoming one of the first colonists in the United States of America and Coffins Association with the Mayflower and Plymouth Rock. Venturing from those Indians to the Indians of Pennsylvania taking a descendant and abducting her. To the kinfolk of the Revolutionary, Civil War, the Union Station formed by Levi Coffin along with the Freed Men Society (as the white men had long before), and the War of 1812. To the early American aviation exploits of the Wright Brothers to the aviation of WWI and WWII in the Land of Sleepy Hollow and Mark Twain. To the founding family of Florida, a paradise connected by aviation, the arts, railroads, and adventure. To romantic families traveling to Marin County, California, Bainbridge Island, Washington, and across the Pacific Ocean to Kauai. The journey over lives with them. A romantic way of life with the established values of a time past. De je veux!

Preface

A person's mind thinks of many things, the windmills of their minds. One wonders why spend so many hours writing a book comprised of the past and diligently searching for answers of the present and future people. It's because of love, love for a spouse that was so fluid and intense, inseparable in mind and body in thought, word, deed, and faithfulness with great trust. He died at such a young age, thirty-three, after joining the service at age sixteen to get to the South Pacific in World War II. It was a relationship so romantic where each other didn't wish to be separated, as they might miss something too important to be missed. Family first. When he was there, it was their visual sight and sound on earth. He dwelled in the heart and could be seen with a vision. Dreams would ensure until one night, after forty or so years, he related he would not come to visit Marijane anymore.

Then I told Chip, and alas, Chip suddenly left earth. She felt that Chip had joined Buddy spiritually as Buddy had told her in the dream that he would not visit her anymore. She felt he was with Chip, and she knew Chip needed him more. Now what was left of Chip physically is now entombed on top of his dad. They're together forever. (Chip had visited him the week before the California accident! He was at the gravesite to talk to him as he had done all the many years before. More unexplainable extraterrestrials! There is a lot more not being reiterated!)

The next day, his eldest son called and related what had happened. He was the one to always say, Close your eyes and think about what you miss and long for and wish. Lo and behold, it did ensue. Their photographs which had been taken away were not totally stolen, as they lived in our hearts, he reiterated. After about two weeks or so, he too left Earth after having some intense conversations each day. It became overwhelming to me. His family couldn't help as it was expected there that whatever they wished was okay! They were in denial. The remaining part of the beginning family could not help. A terrible tragedy. Then one in the family had an accident, and that part of the family was withdrawn. The last remaining member at the moment of this family dissection had more intense transformations to go on with life. Life became empty, but it was comforting to help them, but only one did think to help me. His life too was transformed. I felt it was best for all to tell the romantic story—how he left omens and so did his son at times. There were some to chuckle at, but most times, the emptiness swallowed me up and I would cry…cry like I had not ever done over the forty years. It was a remorse that was intense. I had to reach deep down to remember some of the words that I had given to my children (having no siblings) to bring comfort to myself. I'd retreat into the words of the olden times to get relief. I'd look at everything as I had taught them that your cup is half-full, not half-empty. Life was mediocrity, as I had no one to lean against and to cry and talk to. I had always felt safe with the two, as I would always feel the strength of love through their embrace. Now that was gone. I did have someone who did make her feel safe, especially in an embrace, but the other two were duplicates. Writing the book, though, would bring it all together. It would help to settle the unrest, get rid of my thoughts by placing them on paper and giving them to the world so they wouldn't be forgotten. Something needed to be done as well as other memorials. Then helping others to convey their windmills of their minds would be apropos. Life could go on, at least for the little time left. Helping others would help my windmill of the mind.

These writings are a legacy to my children and grandchildren. It spans my lifetime of adventurers and experiences. For over thirty years, I have read, called, wrote snail mails, and remembered, cried, or been awed over so many people's lives. The hardships of the westward or southern transversions were similar to exploits I saw at the movies. I actually lived at the Middletown's Strand Theatre, even remember being asleep there after entering in the late morning! Singing and dancing on their stage during vaudeville and meeting many celebrities, along with singing on two radio stations and later being in a WWII USO troupe and singing for the UN opening on Norman Brokenshire's Show.

Being a turnkey child, I had a mother who was very advanced and a hardworking dad working seven days a week, enabling us to have all the modern conveniences of a bathroom, refrigerator, stove, and automobile. My mother also had a car in 1926 (a Dusenberg convertible) along with her short haircut. She had been a finalist as Miss Newburgh, and with her feminist, liberated attitude, her aviation in the thirties, then she was placed in the WWII Naval Museum in San Francisco as a lady security guard aged ninety-two, showing the exhibit, and she became prominent with her attitude toward President Obama. My son Cliff working in California holds her in high esteem. Not too far from where her son Chip had lived, he was well-known in Sausalito before moving to Bainbridge Island and then dying in San Diego when coming home from Texas! (And now Sausalito was a temporary place for her son Cliff.)

Now her grand-daughter, Chip's daughter Molly Grace, is looking forward to the publishing of this volume. She, after having graduated from Oregon's Marquette University, lives in Lake Tahoe and is a teacher. A lot of the comments are "de je veux, which her dad taught me while studying at Niagara University and giving me books to read. He always said I had a lot of sayings, which I passed down to him. His philosophy was admirable for his age. At five, he had seen his dad being killed while his grandfather watched! He and his two siblings did a lot of living for their very young ages. I called every experience an adventure. Sometimes I'd sing On the Road Again," and ironically, I was in the Adirondacks, later meeting Willie Nelson and his sister when they played Lake Placid. Ironically, later, my grandsons would go to school in Texas with his sons.

Chip always knew to be a Good Samaritan like his dad and passed it on to his brother. They were taught that God never closes a door and that he doesn't open a window, something taught to me when achieving widowhood in my twenties with a love so strong a bond that it excelled and passed down to his children to teach them never to despair but always rise above it. A doctor explained that at times, we are hanging on in a rain barrel and we must learn to climb out and not get too far down from the ledge or we won't be able to climb out. We have to do for ourselves not resort to drugs, as doctors do today. We have to trust God, and he will protect and help us along our way with our guardian angels watching overhead. We have to always be honest, truthful, and helpful to all of God's creatures of all walks of life.

Other relations who read our endeavors and tributes need to understand that all these writings are written with love and no animosity in any way. The really horrible, theatrical parts of our lives have been left out completely. Certainly, these could have been a great movie, but it is better those experiences rest in peace as a form of experience to help enrich the next generation's thoughts. We have lived through some mistakes of life, always adapting and adopting to our environment, living life to the fullest with grateful expectations. Some parts of our latter lives were hardships somewhat endured as our forefathers did in a different perspective but always with a sense of living life to the best of our abilities, not hurting and harming any being in any way.

Truly it took a long time to utilize the old-fashioned way of numbering the seven thousand to ten thousand or so names. Every time one person was added, I had to go back to the beginning to renumber from insert placement. Find your name or parents' names, and then take that number and go backward to see your branch. The volumes have been compiled to the best of my ability. I'm sorry that when newer processes came forth, I could not transfer so much data, although my son Cliff had enabled our family to know about the new technology, as an engineer at IBM. I remember a cartoon that showed a train that said, Hop aboard or you'll miss out on the new technology. This was when he was approached by IBM to accept employment. It really held true, as the train then chugged into high speed. He was later at a more terrific speed being a million miles each year on airlines, leaving on Sundays, coming back on Fridays. Of course, I was happy that he wasn't on his usual flight, which went down in ironically my family's home state, Pennsylvania, on 9/11! That was a devastating moment in history and one in our lifetime.

Introduction

Recently, I read the Smithsonian Magazine that told of the Clovis people as being the first Americans. The Clovis people were people with the dinosaurs! The cavemen! They were the inhabitants during the Ice Age. The first findings were in New Mexico; Santa Rosa, California; Cactus Hill; Paisley Cave, Oregon; and Monte Verde, Chile. Libbok Lake, Texas; Sierra Vista, Arizona; and Manis, Washington, came into view and then Florida at the Page Lacider (misspelt) Lagoon. Archeological sites are now in Avella, Pennsylvania (near Pittsburgh), which had been a secret of the landowner! I remember, as a child in the thirties, where I would see signs saying View a dinosaur on people's farms. These sightings later were documented as diggings of the Ice Age with the bones going to museums. There were arrowheads that depicted the Chloe people and were called the Chloe arrowheads legacies. It reminded me of finding arrowheads at my great-grandmother Heller's farm Beaver Valley, Pennsylvania, really abundant. But I knew that the Indians had dwelled there, as when my mother and dad married, one of the Indians gave my mother a beaded medicine bag. It was a prized possession. This part had historical connotations. My time was when Indian head pennies were abundant and when my mother collected silver dollars. She also collected the old dimes as ole' John D. Rockefeller had given her one. Funny how later, I would horseback ride on his estate in Pocantico Hills and grow up nearby having a best friend (Joan Barbour) and a couple of classmates living there.

It has been ascertained that at first, it was the Asian people who walked across the ice, but now it has been determined that the Europeans walked across the ice…island to island and/or there were boats of a sort like the Vikings rafts involved because of fishing! Two archaeologists, one at the US National Museum and an archaeologist at Britain University at Exeter, England, suggest in the year 2013 that the New World, more than twenty thousand years ago, America was settled in the northeast. Now wouldn't this be romanticism within these beings to migrate across from France, Netherlands, Russia, Hungary, Austria, Germany, England, Ireland, and then continue forth for more farmland or whaling or career to survive? Some became philanthropists or humanitarians along with being Good Samaritans—a melting pot but always just American, no subtitle.

Yesterday, our local newspaper said that a team from the British Museum/University of London made the discovery as to the earliest human relation of eight hundred thousand years ago walking the mud of England, discovered as the tide rescinded, showing a man and two children's footprints. It was a really significant, sound finding of a family living there, a pioneer. How exciting. I wrote to my grandson Christopher (an artist), at that time going to college for archaeology. To me, it was like this book in discovering a family—Coffyn/Coffin!

(Now adding a point in 2018.) It seems that the English archaeologists made a new discovery. The early caveman, the Clovis Clan's young child, was found, and newer technology with D&A linked her to another clan that was located in Siberia. It attested to the fact that the two sections of early people were somehow linked! This would also reaffirm that the early Indians in America were probably united with this Siberian clan that was first united in earlier times with the Clovis Clan, a melting pot of the very beginning. What a discovery that was both over and across, united with the other that came from west and continuing into American landscape, all related. It probably goes back to Adam and Eve!

One of the main people I am reminded of as an example is Captain George Coffin, who was born on January 21, 1797. The first observation in his journal was If you can't do it right, don't do it at all. It was a de je veux time. Plus, he had a feeling about his journal, as I do my genealogist epic with my son Chip saying a legacy. Dr. Grange Coffin of California (age ninety-plus) felt I was doing a great deed, as did Warren Coffin of California. Warren was born in Colorado (a family from Maine) and moved to Oregon then California! Likewise, Sherwood Lessig of Pennsylvania, Betty Ann Fulton of Connecticut, the Sharpe family of New Jersey, and others. I was so impressed to hear from Ned Coffin (ninety-one years young) of Vermont. It made me feel so connected with people of the past. It happened when I bought Sagamore Beach in the Adirondacks, which a Coffin had owned in the 1800s, and Chip became so impressed with next-door neighbor Charlie Reich, the lawyer and author of Greening of America and later sorcerer of Bolinas Reef. (Years later, Chip helped build the park there in center of town of Bolinas Reef. Paths came together again!)

It's mainly to our branch that I have added the leaves, probably a wee bit discriminating, as my heartfelt emotions weld me to their words and/or their actions. Someone asked if I was continuing Louis's work, to which I said no. I contacted individuals I found in the White Pages, vicinity records, newspapers, libraries, and historical societies. I have read on the Internet, but being in my eighties, I haven't depended on that as I have found errors. I know the people want one to contact, but that's not my mission in life. At this time, many ninety-year-olds have asked for me to publish and to have a reunion. My research has this wide, entwining relationship with about eight thousand individuals. There shall be more, but since my numbering is done manually and the family names are also being done manually, it occupies a lot of time to perfect. I do not have an index because of all these names. That would be a pamphlet in itself.

I found the Coffyn/Coffin and Lessig families most accommodating. They had families of Shafers, Shaeffers, Metzger, Heller, Helms, Custard, Rouse, Huston, Holmes, Green/Greene, Gardner, Franklin, Penn, Cushing, Haskell, Brown, Richardson, Pike, Moore, Franz Joseph, Edward I, Gayer, Smith, Holland, Mayhew, Zita of Austria/Hungary, Horton, Jackson, Morrison, Cushman, Starbuck, Macy, Jones, Swain, Folger, Bartlett, and on. I, being the last of the older generation living, found some of my family to be rude and crude, but I feel it was their ignorance or them being somewhat a townie personality. Sad, as my (and their) grandmother was a Coolidge and touched Austrian-Hungarian royalty. They must be part of a disappointed younger generation who never really lived life wholeheartedly. I am so amazed at how many people passed my path from the late 1800s. My paternal great-grandmother, who showed her strength in traveling from her farm in Pennsylvania in 1935 to Goshen, New York, by car (with my dad) to visit her first great-grandchild was awesome. My dad so loved his grandmother, aunts, and uncles who were Pennsylvania farmers. Likewise, my mother drove a car to take me to my maternal grandmother every weekend, whom I loved dearly. People did live better back then. They had morals, and yes, we had rules by which to conditionally live, which were hard at times, not like the generation of today! I have learned to adapt and adopt into my environment all these years because of the plateaus of my life, just like my mother adapted and adopted after riding a stagecoach from Pennsylvania to driving her own convertible in 1926 and flying a plane in 1937.

The history of Nantucket told how the Civil War gave them opportunity to show their patriotism. There were Coffins who died with Yankee uniforms, many at Battle of Gettysburg, which Buddy had our children witness before he expired! Those from Nantucket ranked from Brevat major general to lieutenant and from commander in army to petty officer with the rank and file throughout every branch of service. Parallel to this, the Lessigs were Pennsylvania volunteers. In total, I have 130 listed in DAR Records, probably more. Of course, I was so awed by the history of Levi Coffin at Guilford and how he helped at a young age the people in slavery, which the Coffins and relatives did not believe in. Ship captains helped some men to get away, and they gave them jobs as cooks at the same pay as the first mates on board. He schooled them and helped to feed them and other families did as well. I was taken aback that over two thousand family members, Quakers, went to Guilford. Can you image all those people going over the roads? It was that they left Guilford and coming from Maine, Massachusetts, Vermont, New Hampshire, New York, Connecticut, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, etc., went to Tennessee, Kentucky, and Indiana. Levi stayed in Indiana, which became Ohio and formed with his wife, the Union Station. He went to Europe and secured a great sum to help the slavery people. He organized the Freedmen Society that many had been in when coming to America. They too were the servants and had to pay their way. Lucretia Coffin Mott from Pennsylvania was another person who dealt with humanity. There are statues in Seneca Falls, New York, dedicated to them. Living in the South is very, very different in this day and age; I feel as I did years ago when coming here that I was fighting the war. Also with Oprah Winfrey's connotations about a book and everything about slavery and the three museums dedicated to them, I feel saddened that nothing was said of Levi Coffin and his wife. The book Uncle Tom's Cabin was being annihilated at the libraries and the West Coast. Never a word about the thousands of emancipated slaves, who when he died were in the streets against the government who would not allow Quakers to have a tombstone! They raised the money and built a monument to him. So many unsung heroes at the present time. The democrats are throwing our country away with all the hate, money, religion, and power they want. I do hope it turns around, as I had someone tell me I was an immigrant. They asked, What year did your family come to Ellis Island?

I said, "What? There was no Ellis Island. They came into Massachusetts and Pennsylvania amongst the Indians. I'm an American, a twelfth generation, a melting pot of DNA who was intended to be an American only. We have fifteen generations in the country!

I am awed about how many people are related and answer they are a cousin removed relationship. Names keep occurring in both families like I reiterated I could not extend the leaves as a college professor had done over the years as it is only me to carry forth the reading, travel, office expense, etc., not having a school staff to make the leaves develop within Internet connections.

Ned Coffin thought I was a representative of Nantucket historical staff for a continuation of Louis's book. This too had the assistance of so many individuals from the reunion of 1884. Also, it would have been wonderful if Will Gardner were still living, as he and I had several conversations about my continuing with Buddy's generation. This was back in 1945. I was thankful to encounter Louis about a reunion of 1884 extension work. I was really into genealogy in the forties probably because our family book had been printed and I was left out! It really rejuvenated when the author's brother came into the hotel years later to remark that he had been coming for years to the Adirondacks and would never stop at the hotel because thought it too tacky and not worthy to stop. He noticed the changes, especially me wearing a formal, after-six attire uniform for dinner, as well as employees. I then started to list the hotel on the historical list but was interrupted by a really bad marriage.

We all loved the cabin by the shore at Sagamore, which a Coffin family owned way back when, before the Sagamore Golf Course and resort center. Chip was blown out of it when we were opening up for the season. I rushed him to the doctor, as it was a serious explosion. I felt badly as these weren't episodes we should have been faced with. Life was an explosive scam in marriage time. Chip came out of it all right, as he and I did with other episodes of life which we should have never endured Maybe they were God's tests to our endurability and survivorship!

When I saw little signs in my research that Wheeler Coffin was one of the first genealogists, I knew it was right to fully extend our one little batch of leaves and delve into lots of other leaves, develop the stories of the people living and coming forth with their families' tales. For some, I felt saddened that I couldn't be there as support like Bill Coffin of Point Pleasant, New Jersey, when his wife expired. But I was happy to share his joy of his first great-grandson, which brought back those feelings of my great-grandmother. It made me happier about the additional work done by me after Lorraine Lentach, Palm Beach County Genealogy Society librarian, who said just one line wouldn't be enough and helping me to start again and again during my lunch hours, securing books from the 1800s to read and understand bits of the Internet. Then Bill and Maggie Flynn brought me books from their residence at Chatham, Massachusetts, to finish a research episode after visiting Nantucket Research Library. It was ironic that Cliff and they flew to Martha's Vineyard, which filled in the gaps about the migration off Nantucket. It was helpful, the book that Phil and Janice Bowers sent me, connecting even the Hudson River captains. Amazing how many little bits and pieces fill the puzzle of earlier lives.

It seems as though the research shall never end, as there is always another curve going around and more leaves drop down. Hopefully, those leaves that I leave others can use to find their families' roots. My son Cliff hopes I develop this volume so it is not left to him to complete. This occurred when I developed pneumonia not through ignorance but accidentally during a ten-hour flight to Kauai, Hawaii. I then asked a granddaughter if she would continue the legacy that her dad, Chip, wanted to leave. Hopefully, I shall curtail my endeavors in another year at most. The fall this year shall be a trip for Cliff and I to go to the Nantucket Historical Association to ascertain what other little tidbits I should curtail. This project is not a birth-and-death data bank but more or less my autobiography as well. A lot of de je veux attractions. Maybe it was discovering so many women who were like my mother in their endeavors. Not the stationery being in the kitchen and do the housework agenda, as many Coffin males attributed a woman's life which I encountered with my in-laws (not my husband). Not to say their lives were wrong, but it shows that the women of today do not understand the tedious tasks they did. Probably that's why life is so crazy. Too many machines to do their work, and they have more idle time to twiddle and likewise some men. Not all, as I saw the different family lives when operating a hotel in Adirondacks, the families that liked back to basic; you could feel the love. Not so with the divorced, dysfunctional families. I feel that's why there are so many mental problems today. It goes passing on down. The Coffyn/Lessig families worked and keep working and having family togetherness. That's what makes America. Just like the Clives. Funny about what goes around comes around. Cliff helped me find Captain Coffin being among the first to purchase land in Old Towne Sausalito. I was elated. Further on, there were items with G. W. Coffin located at their radio station!

Buddy's namesake was a captain aboard a Washington vessel going to the Pacific on July 14 to December 1839. He picked up 1,780 units of sperm oil. He was probably in Hawaii, as several others I have cited had paraphernalia site there. This was common for whaler vessels. The captain's names are so similar that it is hard to connect their branches. It was something to see that several Charles F. Coffins were married to Mary Janes throughout generations!

The death of my husband, Buddy, then my parents, and then the heart-rendering expiration of my son Chip, along with, simultaneously, the death episodes of my son Cliff adding a few other complicities has always placed me in a state of shock that God places upon my aurora to trudge on, to survive. My sons have always reiterated that I was a strong person when I'd commend them. The world through all this changed and changed for my family. Others do not seem to be given all these challenges our family has had to deal with. I see that the world is changing into a state of non-Christianity, which our forefathers did indeed labor to keep America free and honest with integrity. I always looked at it as our cup was half-filled, not empty. Gratified with humility and with humanitarianism along the road of life, this has made us stronger—stronger in our convictions, our love, our attachments to others, and so on. Adapt and then adopt one's environment. We thank God all the time for helping us along. Thanksgiving is a Coffin celebration and Christmas in a life of belief.

I guess that these volumes are maybe an autobiography to write things, to understand, and then to close the book, starting life anew in the twilight years, appreciating every day and every episode of life as endearment. In my heart, I know I must swallow hard and not talk of politics, religion, and these new ways of life. The ways are not conclusive in the end for many of the children. It is true as was said at church that we all have come from dysfunctional families…but now with the new matrimonial attributes and males having female children and females having males for mothers. Having been totally a single mother, when I remarried, they never took a real father role, just the deduction not to be drafted or pay maintenance, only to scam the money, as they had planned and to be controlling! The children were cheated of a normal life at those intervals, as so many others have had, and those people did not really appreciate what they had. The children lost college money as well as regular remunerations. I tried to give my family their dad's and my entwined values. I've printed what one son wrote to me to help me with the windmills of my mind, as I had ended up in an environment of mayhem. I do hope that the young people will turn around all this living that pertains to just money and power, hoping it does not touch the real values of life. Our country was founded because of freedom of the church and government. The earlier persons earned their freedom status. Although they didn't say they were slaves, let's face it that the corporations of today, along with the government levels—federal, state, county, and town—really make slaves of their employees! They don't honor family first but the stocks, earnings, and quarterly money with powerful titles. People in local governments do not feel that they are servants of the government and are at a lower salary to help pay back to the country. They have turned into competitive individuals, not realizing that all states do not have the ability to give people six figures. They're sleeping with sugarplums in their dreams. So that's why they love the candy app? I wish you love and tranquility in life.

Portledge, Devonshire, England

Portledge, the Coffyn/Coffin Manor House, England Sir Richard Coffyn of Alwington in Devonshire England

From Prince's Worthies of Devonshire, we learn that the ancient family of the same settled at Portledge by the seaside in the Parish of Alwington. Five miles from Biddeford, they flourished there from the Norman Conquest of 1066, and from the time of King Henry I until the age of King Edward II (until Edward VI) for two hundred years, such successive heirs of this family bore the name of Richard Coffyn.

Within a short distance of Fallaise, a town of Normandy stands the old chateau of Cortiton, once the home of the Norman Coffins. The last…Miss Coffin married a LeClere late in the eighteenth century, since which time the LeClere family has occupied the Norman estates. The chateau, though ancient, was in good repair.

At the Five Hundred Coffins Nantucket reunion (1881), our relatives attended (Grandfather George Coffin and our