Tristram Coffin

Tristram Coffin was born at Brixton, near Plymouth, in Devon, England, about 1605; another account gives 1609. ^[1] His parents were Peter Coffin of Brixton and Joan, whose surname Allen Coffin (1881) read as Thember or Thumber. ^[5] Allen Coffin concluded that Tristram, a landowner among the Devon gentry, was a Royalist loyal to King Charles I and “most probably” a Churchman rather than a Puritan, though by his own account this was an assumption. ^[6] Thomas Amory thought him “not over-fond of either party.” ^[7] His only brother, John, was mortally wounded at Plymouth Fort and died eight days later. When this happened, and on which side John fought, is not recorded, though Allen Coffin assumed he fell for the King early in the war. ^[8] In 1642, the year the Civil War began, Tristram left England with his family; he left no record of why. ^[7] Whatever the reason, it was not the rule of Oliver Cromwell, who was not installed as Lord Protector until 16 December 1653. ^[9]

In 1642 Tristram emigrated to Massachusetts with his wife, Dionis Stevens, five children, his widowed mother, Joan, and two unmarried sisters. ^[10] The family went first to Salisbury and the same year to Haverhill, where Tristram witnessed the Indian deed for Pentucket (Haverhill) on 15 November 1642. They moved to Newbury in 1648–49 and back to Salisbury about 1654–55. ^[11] At Newbury he was licensed to keep an ordinary (a tavern) and a ferry across the Merrimack River on the Newbury side. ^[11] In September 1653 his wife Dionis was presented at the Ipswich court for selling beer at three pence a quart, above the legal price. She proved she had put six bushels of malt into the hogshead, more than the four the law required, and was discharged. ^[12][13]

In 1659 Tristram organized, at Salisbury, the company that bought Nantucket Island. ^[10] By a deed dated 2 July 1659, Thomas Mayhew sold his rights in the island to nine purchasers for £30 and two beaver hats, “one for myselfe, and one for my Wife,” keeping a twentieth share for himself. ^[14] The island lies about 30 miles south of Cape Cod. ^[15] Later tradition held that the settlers went there to escape religious persecution on the mainland. Allen Coffin called that impression “entirely erroneous” and argued the move was made for better farming and grazing. ^[16] The nine purchasers were Tristram Coffin, Thomas Macy, Christopher Hussey, Richard Swain, Thomas Barnard, Peter Coffin, Stephen Greenleaf, John Swain, and William Pile (or Pike). With Mayhew they made ten owners. In February 1659, at Salisbury, the ten agreed to admit ten more partners, among them Tristram Coffin Jr. and James Coffin, making the twenty original proprietors. ^[17]

Tristram moved to Nantucket about 1660, though his whole family was not settled there until 1662. ^[1][18] Governor Francis Lovelace of New York commissioned him as Nantucket’s first Chief Magistrate on 29 June 1671, and Governor Edmund Andros commissioned him again on 16 September 1677. ^[19][20] He and Dionis had nine children, two of whom died in infancy; at his death he left seven children and sixty grandchildren. ^[21][22] Their children and grandchildren married into the Starbuck, Bunker, Gardner, Macy and other founding families. ^[3] He died on Nantucket on 2 October 1681; some court records give 3 October. ^[23][24] By 1728, by the count of his first grandchild, Stephen Greenleaf, 1,582 of his descendants had been born, and 1,128 of them were then living. ^[22]

James Coffin, born in England on 12 August 1640, was the ancestor of the Loyalist brothers General John Coffin and Admiral Sir Isaac Coffin, through James’s son Nathaniel, a master mariner. ^[3][25] According to Allen Coffin, James was also the ancestor of the reformer Lucretia Coffin Mott. ^[26] Through James’s younger brother John, born at Haverhill on 30 October 1647, John’s daughter Hannah, ^[3][4] and the Gardner → Macy → Folger Nantucket marriages that followed, Tristram’s line runs to Carol Perry and to the brothers, the line documented on this page.

• Organized the company of nine purchasers that bought Nantucket Island from Thomas Mayhew in 1659 for £30 and two beaver hats ^[10][14]
• First Chief Magistrate of Nantucket, commissioned 1671 and again 1677 ^[19][20]
• Early settler of Salisbury, Haverhill and Newbury, Massachusetts, before the Nantucket purchase; witness to the 1642 Indian deed for Haverhill ^[11]
• Licensed ferry keeper across the Merrimack River on the Newbury side ^[11]
• Patriarch of the American Coffin family: 60 grandchildren at his death; 1,582 descendants born by 1728 ^[22]
• Ancestor of Mary Coffin Starbuck (his daughter), Nathaniel Coffin (his grandson), General John Coffin, Admiral Sir Isaac Coffin, and Lucretia Coffin Mott ^[27][25][26]