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This work is a biographical tribute to Charles Carleton Coffin, the 19th‑century war correspondent, traveler, author and public servant. Compiled at the request of Coffin’s widow in the spring of 1896, the author William E. Griffis frames the narrative as a “capped cameo” rather than a full statue, drawing on personal letters, family recollections and the assistance of friends such as Dr. Edmund Carleton and Rev. H. A. Bridgman. The book opens with a solemn preface that explains its purpose and then proceeds through a detailed table of contents, covering topics from Coffin’s Revolutionary ancestry and early New England life to his Civil‑War reporting, overseas voyages, and later civic engagements. The introductory chapter paints Coffin as a devout, genial figure whose “pen was a sword” and whose memory the author seeks to preserve without flattery.
Griffis writes in a reverent, nineteenth‑century prose style, blending factual chronicle with moral reflection. The tone is earnest and occasionally lyrical, reflecting the period’s biographical conventions and a strong Christian worldview. Readers who appreciate thorough historical sketches, Civil‑War journalism, and the genteel narrative voice of late‑Victorian America will find this portrait of a modest yet influential New Englander both informative and evocative.
The opening · free to read
Charles Carleton Coffin had a face that helped one to believe in God. His whole life was an evidence of Christianity. His was a genial, sunny soul that cheered you. He was an originator and an organizer of happiness. He had no ambition to be rich. His investments were in giving others a start and helping them to win success and joy. He was a soldier of the pen and a knight of truth. He began the good warfare in boyhood. He laid down armor and weapons only on the day that he changed his world. His was a long and beautiful life, worth both the living and the telling. He loved both fact and truth so well that one need write only realities about him. He cared little for flattery, so we shall not flatter him. His own works praise him in the gates.
He had blue eyes that often twinkled with fun, for Mr. Coffin loved a joke. He was fond to his last day of wit, and could make quick repartee. None enjoyed American humor more than he. He pitied the person who could not see a joke until it was made into a diagram, with annotations. In spirit, he was a boy even after three score and ten. The young folks "lived in that mild and magnificent eye." Out of it came sympathy, kindness, helpfulness. We have seen those eyes flash with indignation. Scorn of wrong snapped in them. Before hypocrisy or oppression his glances were as mimic lightning.
We loved to hear that voice. If one that is low is "an excellent thing in woman," one that is rich and deep is becoming to a man. Mr. Coffin's tones were sweet to the ear, persuasive, inspiring. His voice moved men, his acts more.
His was a manly form. Broad-footed and full-boned, he stood nearly six feet high. He was alert, dignified, easily accessible, and responsive even to children. With him, acquaintanceship was quickly made, and friendship long preserved. Those who knew Charles Carleton Coffin respected, honored, loved him. His memory, in the perspective of time, is as our remembrance of his native New Hampshire hills, rugged, sublime, tonic in atmosphere, seat of perpetual beauty. So was he, a moral invigorant, the stimulator to noble action, the centre of spiritual charm.
Who was he, and what did he do that he should have his life-story told?
First of all, he was the noblest work of God, an honest man. Nothing higher than this. The New Hampshire country boy rose to one of the high places in the fourth estate. He became editor of one of Boston's leading daily newspapers. On the battle-field he saw the movements of the mightiest armies and navies ever gathered for combat. As a white lily among war correspondents, he was ever trusted. He not only informed, but he kept in cheer all New England during four years of strain. With his pen he made himself a master of English style. He was a poet, a musician, a traveller, a statesman, and, best of all and always, a Christian. He travelled around the globe, and then told the world's story of liberty and of the war that crushed slavery and state sovereignty and consolidated the Union. With his books he has educated a generation of American boys and girls in patriotism. He died without entering into old age, for he was always ready to entertain a new idea. Let us glance at his name and inheritance. He was well named, and ever appreciated his heritage. In his Christian, middle, and family name, is a suggestion. In each lies a story.
"Charles," as we say, is the Norman form of the old Teutonic Carl, meaning strong, valiant, commanding. The Hungarians named a king Carl.
"Carleton" is the ton or town of Carl or Charles.
"Coffin" in old English meant a cask, chest, casket, box of any kind.
The Latin Cophinum was usually a basket. When Wickliffe translated the Gospel, he rendered the verse at Matt. xiv. 20, "They took up of that which remained over of the broken pieces, twelve coffins full."
The name as a family name is still found in England, but all the Coffins in America are descended from Tristram Coffin, who sailed from Plymouth, England, in 1642, and in 1660 settled in Nantucket. The most ancient seat of the name and family of the Coffins in England is Portledge, in the parish of Alwington. To his house, and last earthly home, in Brookline, Mass., built under his own eye, and in which Charles Carleton Coffin died, he gave the name of Alwington.
"Carleton's" grandfather, Peter Coffin, married Rebecca Hazeltine, of Chester, N. H., whose ancestors had come from England to Salem, Mass., in 1637, and settled at Bradford. Carleton has told something of his ancestry and kin in his "History of Boscawen." In his later years, in the eighties of this century, at the repeated and urgent request of his wife, Carleton wrote out, or, rather, jotted down, some notes for the story of the earlier portion of his life. He was to have written a volume--had his wife succeeded, after due perseverance, in overcoming his modesty--entitled "Recollections of Seventy Years." To this, we, also, that is, the biographer and others, often urged him. It was not to be.
Excepting, then, these hastily jotted notes, Mr. Coffin never indicated, gave directions, or prepared materials for his biography. To the story of his life, as gathered from his own rough notes, intended for after-reference and elaboration, let us at once proceed, without further introduction.
The Coffins of America are descended from Tristram Coffin of England and Nantucket. Charles Carleton Coffin was born of Revolutionary sires. He first saw light in the southwest corner room of a house which stood on Water Street, in Boscawen, N. H., which his grandfather, Captain Peter Coffin, had built in 1766.
This ancestor, "an energetic, plucky, good-natured, genial man," married Rebecca Hazeltine, of Chester, N. H. When the frame of the house was up and the corner room partitioned off, the bride and groom began housekeeping. Her wedding outfit was a feather bed, a frying-pan, a dinner-pot, and some wooden and pewter plates. She was just the kind of a woman to be the mother of patriots and to make the Revolution a success. The couple had been married nine years, when the news of the marching of the British upon Lexington reached Boscawen, on the afternoon of the 20th of April, 1775. Captain Coffin mounted his horse and rode to Exeter, to take part in the Provincial Assembly, which gathered the next day. Two years later, he served in the campaign against Burgoyne. When the militia was called to march to Bennington, in July, 1777, one soldier could not go because he had no shirt. Mrs. Coffin had a web of tow cloth in the loom. She at once cut out the woven part, sat up all night, and made the required garment, so that he could take his place in the ranks the next morning. One month after the making of this shirt, the father of Charles Carleton Coffin was born, July 15.
When the news of Stark's victory at Bennington came, the call was for every able-bodied man to turn out, in order to defeat Burgoyne. Every well man went, including Carleton's two grandfathers, Captain Peter Coffin, who had been out in June, though not in Stark's command, and Eliphalet Kilborn. The women and children were left to gather in the crops. The wheat was ripe for the sickle, but there was not a man or boy to cut it. With her baby, one month old, in her arms, Mrs. Peter Coffin mounted the horse, leaving her other children in care of the oldest, who was but seven years old. The heroine made her way six miles through the woods, fording Black Water River to the log cabin of Enoch Little, on Little Hill, in the present town of Webster. Here were several sons, but the two eldest had gone to Bennington. Enoch, Jr., fourteen years old, could be spared to reap the ripened grain, but he was without shoes, coat, or hat, and his trousers of tow cloth were out at the knee.
"Enoch can go and help you, but he has no coat," said Mrs. Little.
"I can make him a coat," said Mrs. Coffin.
The boy sprang on the horse behind the heroic woman, who, between the baby and the boy, rode upon the horse back to the farm. Enoch took the sickle and went to the wheat field, while Mrs. Coffin made him a coat. She had no cloth, but taking a meal-bag, she cut a hole in the bottom for his head, and two other holes for his arms. Then cutting off the legs of a pair of her stockings, she sewed them on for sleeves, thus completing the garment. Going into the wheat field, she laid her baby, the father of Charles Carleton Coffin, in the shade of a tree, and bound up the cut grain into sheaves.
In 1789, when the youngest child of this Revolutionary heroine was four months old, she was left a widow, with five children. Three were daughters, the eldest being sixteen; and two were sons, the elder being twelve. With rigid economy, thrift, and hard work, she reared her family. In working out the road tax she was allowed four pence halfpenny for every cart-load of stones dumped into miry places on the highway. She helped the boys fill the cart with stones. While the boy who became Carleton's father managed the steers, hauled and dumped the load, she went on with her knitting.
Of such a daughter of the Revolution and of a Revolutionary sire was Carleton's father born. When he grew to manhood he was "tall in stature, kind-hearted, genial, public-spirited, benevolent, ever ready to relieve suffering and to help on every good cause. He was an intense lover of liberty and was always true to his convictions." He fell in love with Hannah, the daughter of Deacon Eliphalet Kilborn, of Boscawen, and the couple lived in the old house built by his father. There, after other children had been born, Charles Carleton Coffin, her youngest child, entered this world at 9 A. M., July 26, 1823. From this time forward, the mother never had a well day. After ten years of ill health and suffering, she died from too much calomel and from slow starvation, being able to take but little food on account of canker in her mouth and throat. Carleton, her pet, was very much with her during his child-life, so that his recollections of his mother were ever very clear, very tender, and profoundly influential for good.
The first event whose isolation grew defined in the mind of "the baby new to earth and sky," was an incident of 1825, when he was twenty-three months old. His maternal grandfather had shot a hawk, breaking its wing, and bringing it to the house alive. The boy baby standing in the doorway, all the family being in the yard, always remembered looking at what he called "a hen with a crooked bill." Carleton's recollection of the freshet of August, 1826, when the great slide occurred at the White Mountains, causing the death of the Willey family, was more detailed. This event has been thrillingly described by Thomas Starr King. The irrepressible small boy wanted to "go to meeting" on Sunday. Being told that he could not, he cried himself to sleep. When he awoke he mounted his "horse,"--a broomstick,--and cantered up the road for a half mile. Captured by a lady, he resisted vigorously, while she pointed to the waters running in white streams down the hills through the flooded meadows and telling him he would be drowned.
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