Coffeen family

The lineage and history of Henry Asa Coffeen’s family has been traced back to its very beginnings in America to Michael Coffeen (1706-1758), of Irish descent, who came to America from the Isle of Man in 1723. He had a son named John Coffeen (1727-1802), a captain in the Vermont Rangers. Captain John Coffeen’s son was the Reverend Michael Coffeen (1758-1813). Rev. Michael Coffeen’s son was John P. Coffeen (1783-1821). Alvah Preston Coffeen (1811-1880), Henry Asa Coffeen’s father, was the son of John P. Coffeen.

Henry Asa Coffeen was born in Ohio in 1841. He graduated from Abingdon College (Illinois) in 1864, and became a teacher and later Superintendent of Schools in Bement, Illinois. In 1869, Coffeen and his family moved to Danville, Illinois, where he ran a book and music store and was the first Sunday School Superintendent in the Christian Church. He moved his family to Big Horn, Wyoming Territory, in 1884, where he built and ran a general store. When it became known that the railroad was going to run through nearby Sheridan rather than Big Horn, Coffeen moved his store and his family there in 1887. He became a prominent businessman in Sheridan and was chosen to be a member of the constitutional convention that framed the constitution of the new State of Wyoming in 1889. Later, he was elected as a Democrat to the Fifty-third Congress (1893-1895) of the United States. He also served on the Board of Trustees of the University of Wyoming in the early 1900s. Coffeen died in Sheridan on December 9, 1912.

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