Catherine J. Coffin Portrait

This portrait of my great-great grandmother, Catherine Justice Coffin has been a bit of a mystery. It looks like a painting, but there is no evidence, no record, that her portrait was ever painted. She died at the age of 44 of tuberculosis in 1866, in Yellow Springs Ohio where she had gone for treatment. This is how it looked hanging on my dining room wall. I had it cleaned and the frame fixed about 16 years ago and then forgot about learning anything about it.

Just recently, however, in downsizing my house before moving to a retirement community, I sent this and the portrait of her husband Zebulon Coffin to a niece. I thought it would be a good idea to pass along some information to her about these portraits and started looking to see what I already had.

As it turns out, when I had the work done on Catherine’s portrait I learned some interesting things. First, this is an oil enhanced photograph, not an oil painting. Second, it was apparently produced at the behest of Jessie Coffin Dalton and Katie Coffin Salt as a gift for their brother Henry B. Coffin in August 1916. There is no information recorded about what event this was a gift for; I do know it was not presented on his birthday. When I studied the date it was presented, I noticed that it was the anniversary of their mother Catherine’s death fifty years before. It is therefore possible that it was commemorating her death. This would have been in keeping with what I know about this family and their habit of marking important events.