This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1881 edition. Excerpt: ... THE COFFIN FAMILY. TRISTRAM COFFYN, (as he always signed his name, ) the founder of the family line in America, and from whom all persons by the name ot Coffin in this country are descended, was born at Brixton, a small parish and village, near Plymouth, in the southwestern part of Devonshire .County, England, in the year 1605. He married Dionis Stevens, daughter of Robert Stevens, esquire, of Brixton, and, in 1642, emigrated to America with his wife, five small children, his widowed mother, and two unmarried sisters, lie lived alternately in Salisbury, Haverhill and Newbury, in the Colony of Massachusetts, until 1659, when he came to Nantucket, then under the jurisdiction of Xew York, and made arrangements for the purchase of the island by a company which he organized at Salisbury. He returned to the island with his family in 1660, where he lived until his death, which happened on the 2d day of October, A. D. 1681, at his new residence on the hill, at Northham, near Capaum Bond, at the age of 76 years. Coffin is a word of Hebrew origin, signifying a small basket. Whether the Israelitish hosts were sufficiently enlightened to be in the enjoyment of baskets before the Egyptians, or whether the chosen people of God were especially favored with a knowledge of the art of basketmaking while the rest of the world plodded on with less commodious means of transit, are matters which cannot at this remote period of time be satisfactorily answered. But when, according to sacred history, Ave read that a multitude, from a desert place, were fed with five loaves and two fishes, and there was taken up of the fragments that remained twelve baskets full, we may be assured that baskets flourished among the Jews anterior to the Christian era; so, of course, .