{"id":6239,"date":"2016-04-16T15:58:19","date_gmt":"2016-04-16T19:58:19","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/genealogygals.com\/blog\/?p=6239"},"modified":"2016-04-27T13:24:24","modified_gmt":"2016-04-27T17:24:24","slug":"abigail-butler-coffin-1783-1858","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/genealogygals.com\/blog\/abigail-butler-coffin-1783-1858\/","title":{"rendered":"Abigail Butler Coffin (1783-1858)"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Coffin-family-dag-cased_thumb.jpg\"<\/a>Abigail Butler Coffin is my third female ancestor who migrated with her husband and children from Nantucket to Cincinnati in the early 1800s.\u00a0 She came with four or five young children (the birth date of one son isn\u2019t well recorded).\u00a0 Her oldest child and son was born in 1802 and the family likely migrated in 1811.\u00a0 I say likely because there is little solid evidence and no family story passed down about their migration or their early life.\u00a0 I have discovered that there is at least one letter held in the Nantucket Historical Association\u2019s research library (referenced in Sea Letters <\/a>by Renny Stackpole) that mentions the migration of Cyrus Coffin and family as well as others.\u00a0 At the time the young Coffin family reached Cincinnati it was a very young town in a very young state.<\/p>\n

Abigail was born 30 April 1783 on Nantucket, to Rev. Zebulon Butler and Anna Starbuck Butler.\u00a0 It was at the end of the American Revolution and Nantucket had been severely economically stressed by the War so life was difficult for many on Nantucket.\u00a0 Abigail was not yet 4 years old when her mother died.\u00a0 Her father remarried, to Elizabeth Woodbury, 2 years later but he only lived about 6 months after that marriage.\u00a0 It has been said that he suffered a long sickness before his death but I have not found any more details.\u00a0 Elizabeth Woodbury was likely a relative of Anna Starbuck, perhaps her aunt (her mother\u2019s sister).\u00a0 The records I have seen are not clear.<\/p>\n

So, Abigail, the youngest of the three children of Zebulon and Anna Butler, was left with a step-mother.\u00a0 Elizabeth must have provided the majority of her care from the age\u00a0 of 6, 7 when her father died.\u00a0 Her sister Nancy was 14 when their father died and so she and Abigail would have been left with Elizabeth.\u00a0 Abigail\u2019s brother John was lost at sea the year after their father died.\u00a0 There is no record that Elizabeth remarried after Zebulon Butler\u2019s death, and she died in 1822.<\/p>\n

The Rev. Zebulon Butler family was most probably not part of the Religious Society of Friends (or Quakers) in Nantucket.\u00a0 Zebulon was called Reverend although I have not seen a particular church affiliation mentioned, and the Society of Friends would not have designated him as a reverend.\u00a0 Abigail did not seem to have been raised in the Society of Friends.<\/p>\n

In March 1802 she married Cyrus Coffin, son of Isaiah and Sarah Folger Coffin.\u00a0 Their marriage does not seem to have been recorded in any of the local church records that are cited in the Vital Records of Nantucket Massachusetts to the Year 1850, Volume III, Marriages (A-G).\u00a0 Since it is known that Cyrus\u2019s parents were Friends, it is possible that he was disowned or censured by the Society for marrying outside the discipline.\u00a0 Certainly Cyrus and Abigail were not members after they migrated to Cincinnati, and did not raise their children as Quakers, although Cyrus’s mother Sarah continued to be a member in Cincinnati.<\/p>\n

The image at the top of this post shows Abigail seated next to Cyrus, with their son Zebulon standing behind them.\u00a0 It is not dated but must have been done between about 1845 and the second half of 1850, certainly no later than 1858.\u00a0 Abigail died in 1858 at age 75 and doesn’t appear to be quite that old here.\u00a0 She was buried in the Spring Grove Cemetery in Cincinnati in the family plot.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Abigail Butler Coffin is my third female ancestor who migrated with her husband and children from Nantucket to Cincinnati in the early 1800s.\u00a0 She came with four or five young children (the birth date of one son isn\u2019t well recorded).\u00a0 …<\/p>\n

Abigail Butler Coffin (1783-1858)<\/span> Read More »<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[344,343,19,143],"class_list":["post-6239","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-misc","tag-butler-family","tag-cincinnati","tag-coffin-family","tag-nantucket"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/genealogygals.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6239","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/genealogygals.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/genealogygals.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/genealogygals.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/genealogygals.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6239"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/genealogygals.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6239\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6260,"href":"https:\/\/genealogygals.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6239\/revisions\/6260"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/genealogygals.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6239"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/genealogygals.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6239"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/genealogygals.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6239"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}