Charles Fisher Coffin was an American clergyman and banker. He served as a banker in the Richmond Bank from 1859 to 1885 and was a clerk of Indiana Yearly Meeting of Friends from 1857 to 1885.
Background
Charles Fisher Coffin was descended from Tristram Coffyn, Massachusetts colonist (1642) and one of the original settlers of Nantucket. Tristram’s grandson, Samuel, was the first of the family to join the Society of Friends, from which date onward this branch of the Coffin family produced many notable Quaker leaders. William, son of Samuel, removed to North Carolina in 1773. His grandson Elijah Coffin (1798 - 1862) was a man of distinction and influence. He was a school-teacher in his youth in North Carolina, where he married Naomi Hiatt, a highly gifted woman of an important Quaker family. With her and his one-year-old son, Charles Fisher Coffin, he migrated to Indiana in 1824, where he was a pioneer school-teacher. He was later a banker in Cincinnati (for one year, 1833), and in Richmond, Indiana; and for thirty-one years was clerk of Indiana Yearly Meeting of Friends.
Education
Charles Fisher Coffin was educated at first by his father and later in the early Quaker schools of the pioneer period.
Career
Coffin began his career in the Richmond Bank, a branch of the State Bank of Indiana, when he was twelve years old, continuing his education during the evenings. When he was twenty-one he took an extensive journey of great educational value through the Eastern states, becoming acquainted with many distinguished persons, especially with the spiritual leaders in the Society of Friends.
Charles succeeded his father in the Richmond Bank in 1859, in which position he had a distinguished business career until 1885, when he retired and removed to Chicago. He was clerk (presiding officer) of Indiana Yearly Meeting of Friends (succeeding his father in this position also) from 1857 to 1885. He was recorded a minister of the Gospel in the Society of Friends in 1866, and continued to preach, with effect and charm and power, until his death at the age of ninety-three.
Coffin was also the first president of the board of control of the Indiana House of Refuge for Juvenile Offenders, a position which he held from 1867 to 1880. He spent the last thirty years of his life in Chicago with the exception of two years in London, England. At his death he left many valuable papers and reminiscences about western pioneer life, as well as extensive correspondence with public men. These are in the library of Earlham College, Richmond, Indiana.
Achievements
Charles Fisher Coffin became recognized as one of the leading Quakers in America. He had a large part in the development of the Sunday-schools in Indiana, and took a foremost place in the early evangelical movement in the Society of Friends. He and his wife were also leaders in the creation of the Indiana Reform School.
Religion
Coffin was a member of the Religious Society of Friends.
Connections
In 1847, Coffin was married to Rhoda M. Johnson of Waynesville, Ohio, a woman of grace and talent, who, like her husband, made a large contribution to the moral and spiritual causes of their time.
