Coffin Ancestry

A Memory of Alwington.

My great-grandmother was Ellen Amanda Coffin, she was a direct descendent of Richard Coffin who was granted the parish of Alwington and the surrounding area by William the Conqueror for his services during the Norman Conquest (1066). Ellen Amanda Coffin was descended from Richard through the line of Peter Coffin who was born in 1535 at Portledge, Devonshire, England. Peter's son Tristram Coffin emigrated to America in 1642. Ellen Amanda Coffin was a seventh generation descendant of Peter.

In the late 1800s Levi Leighton in his writings about his home-town of Columbia, Maine, mentions the local connection to Richard Coffin and Richard's service to William the Conqueror by whom he was rewarded with land and title. Ellen Amanda Coffin married Otis C. Tibbetts in 1855 and died in Columbia Falls, Maine, in 1899. I am 73 years old and living in Columbia Falls, Maine, and grew up in the house where Ellen and Otis had brought up thier family.