The Bay State Monthly, Volume 3, No. 1 | Page 2

of Boston 249
Webster, Col. Fletcher, A reminiscence of 38 Webster, Daniel, The
Last Portrait of 340 Wedding in Ye Days Lang Syne Rev. Anson Titus
36 White and Franconia Mountains, The (24 Illustrations) Fred Myron
Colby 76 Witch, The first New England Willard H. Morse M.D. 270
Worcester, The City of Fanny Bullock Workman 147 (18 Illustrations)

POEMS.
By The Sea Teresa Herrick 377 Equinoctial Sidney Maxwell 383
Growing Old 299 In Ember Days Adelaide G. Waldron 277 Memory's
Pictures Charles Carleton Coffin (1846) 124 The Muse of History
Elizabeth Porter Gould 248 Room At The Top 366 The Old State
House Sidney Maxwell 414 Idleness Sidney Harrison 183 A Birthday
Sonnet George W. Bungay 201

STEEL ENGRAVINGS.
Charles Carleton Coffin Facing 1 John B. Clarke 9 Sylvester Marsh 65
John Albion Andrew 141 John D. Long 221 Hugh O'Brien 253 William
Wallace Crapo 309 Henry W. Paine 391

[Illustration: Charles Carleton Coffin]

THE BAY STATE MONTHLY.
A Massachusetts Magazine
VOL. III. APRIL, 1885. NO. I.
* * * * *

CHARLES CARLETON COFFIN.
Among the emigrants from England to the western world in the great
Puritan exodus was Joanna Thember Coffin, widow, and her son
Tristram, and her two daughters, Mary and Eunice. Their home was in
Brixton, two miles from Plymouth, in Devonshire. Tristram was
entering manhood's prime--thirty-three years of age. He had a family of
five children. Quite likely the political troubles between the King and
Parliament, the rising war cloud, was the impelling motive that induced
the family to leave country, home, friends, and all dear old things, and
become emigrants to the New World. Quite likely Tristram, when a
youth, in 1620, may have seen the Mayflower spread her white sails to
the breeze and fade away in the western horizon, for the departure of
that company of pilgrims must have been the theme of conversation in
and around Plymouth. Without doubt it set the young man to thinking
of the unexplored continent beyond the stormy Atlantic. In 1632 his
neighbors and friends began to leave, and in 1642 he, too, bade farewell
to dear old England, to become a citizen of Massachusetts Bay.
He landed at Newbury, settled first in Salisbury, and ferried people
across the Merrimack between Salisbury and Newbury. His wife,
Dionis, brewed beer for thirsty travellers. The Sheriff had her up before
the courts for charging more per mug than the price fixed by law, but
she went scot free on proving that she put in an extra amount of malt.

We may think of the grave and reverend Justices ordering the beer into
court and settling the question by personal examination of the foaming
mugs,--smacking their lips satisfactorily, quite likely testing it a second
time.
Tristram Coffin became a citizen of Newbury and built a house, which
is still standing. In 1660 he removed with a portion of his family to
Nantucket, dying there in 1681, leaving two sons, from whom have
descended all the Coffins of the country--a numerous and widespread
family.
One of Tristram's decendants, Peter, moved from Newbury to
Boscawen, New Hampshire, in 1766, building a large two-storied
house. He became a prominent citizen of the town--a Captain of the
militia company, was quick and prompt in all his actions. The news of
the affair at Lexington and Concord April 19,1775, reached Boscawen
on the afternoon of the next day. On the twenty-first Peter Coffin was
in Exeter answering the roll call in the Provincial assembly--to take
measures for the public safety.
His wife, Rebecca Hazelton Coffin, was as energetic and patriotic as he.
In August, 1777, everybody, old and young, turned out to defeat
Burgoyne. One soldier could not go, because he had no shirt. It was this
energetic woman, with a babe but three weeks old, who cut a web from
the loom and sat up all night to make a shirt for the soldier. August
came, the wheat was ripe for the sickle. Her husband was gone, the
neighbors also. Six miles away was a family where she thought it
possible she might obtain a harvest hand. Mounting the mare, taking
the babe in her arms, she rode through the forest only to find that all the
able-bodied young men had gone to the war. The only help to be had
was a barefoot, hatless, coatless boy of fourteen.
"He can go but he has no coat," said the mother of the boy.
"I can make him a coat," was the reply.
The boy leaped upon the pillion, rode home with the woman--went out
with his sickle to reap the bearded grain, while the house wife, taking a

meal bag for want of other material, cutting a hole in the bottom, two
holes in the sides, sewing a pair of her own