Morse Coffin Letter

Yours of the 7th at hand, I will begin a reply tho' I start for Boulder in the morning, & will remain two days. Men are also at work on a history of the people of Colo., & a dapper young man has been here pumping us a couple days ago for history of our ancestry & all are to buy a $15.00 book for all the taffy given.

Well, if we go back to 1066 it will do. I guess about that year the whole Coffin clan of Norman pirates came from a valley of Normandy gobbled(?) from ... with William the Conquerer - being Duke of Normandy - & helped him subjugate England.

The name of the clan was then spelled Coffeen, & we are told signified "basket". The commander of this Coffeen (or basket) crowd - named William - was made a knight & when that land was divided among William's land pirates, our ancestor William Coffeen was given a county near land's End. His descendants still hold the land there & the eldest of the family is a Peer and sits in the House of Lords "to this day".

I think the name of the Co. given to the Coffeen tribe was named Alwyngton. Well, between the time of William the Conqueror (1066) to 1642 the tribe increased & scattered.

The ancestor of all "We uns" in America was Tristram Coffin who came over with his eight sons in 1642, and settled in Mass. near Haverhill && New Bedford. Later this tristram Coffin & an ancestor of Ben Franklin & of Charles J. Folger went and purchased Nantucket Island & settled there. His sons scattered & one went up the Hudson to Albany (& from whom we are supposed to be descended) , one in N.C., (another in S.C.) & in fact scattered over the country.

We do not know the name of this son of Tristram Coffin who was our forefather. Our family record only goes back to John Coffin born in 1753 - our great-grandfather & I think it was his bro. who soldiered in the revolution & carried the big powder horn. I am quite sure we are not descended in a direct line from any soldier. I never learned how father came to have those powder horns. There used to be two of them, & one was given to Jacob [?] during the [?] war in N.Y.

I am sure - confident, I mean - that all our Dutch blood (not German) came from the female side, by marriage. It seems the wife of John Coffin (1753) was Mary Vantassle (likely it should be spelled Van Tassle-Tassel), born 1743 & likely there is where our Holland or Mohawk Dutch came from. Isaac Coffin (our grandfather) was born in 1773, & of course both he and all his brothers were too young to be in the revolution. Father was a drummer in a militia Co., but not in the war of 1812. We had no relative in that war so far as we know, only an uncle by marriage - father's bro-in-law, of some name, possible Aunt Betsy Darby's husband. Father was a member of a militia Co., when LaFayette came back to this country in 1824.

I do not think the Hulls were of Scotch ancestry; I think English, but they had been in America for many generations. We must learn this of Aunt Sarah P. or from Uncle Webster when we go east.

Tristram Coffin came from England in 1642, one letter says from England & another says from Wales, but in a general sense Wales is a portion of Eng. & I think [?] if from Wales they were more properly English, only of Norman descent. From 1642 to birth of our great-grandfather John Coffin is over 100 years, & we cannot trace the ancestry during that time & we cannot affirm for sure that we are descended from Tristram, but it is reasonably safe to assume this, as one of his sons settled at Albany, & the other branches of the tribe say all in America are from this Tristram.

I began this letter in time but now it is the 18th & not sent. I have been away some & too busy to write. When I have but a few minutes, or at eve I cannot write, but just read a little and then to bed. Our digging some potatoes & we have 10 to 12 [?]. Market goes down more every day, & we cannot stand it any longer. 70 cts per 100# today. I go to Fort Collins tomorrow to visit an old friend for two days. Very good crops throughout cold, of both growing potatoes, but prices bound to be low low. All well.

You must call on Mrs. DeForest & Mrs. Perry often. With love to you all.

Your Bro. Morse