Lake Maxinkuckee Its Intrigue History & Genealogy Culver, Marshall, Indiana

charles Emmet Coffin  



Hyman's handbook of Indianapolis: an outline history and description of the ... edited by Max Robinson Hyman

    C. E. Coffin & Company, investment bankers and brokers, 9o East Market street, was founded by C. E. Coffin.

    He came to Indianapolis in 1867cand secured employment in the office of Captain William Y. Wiley, one of the firstcreal estate agents in the city. He remained with him six years, during which time he took a law course at a night school, and was admitted to the bar of Marion county in 1871.

    Finding the real estate business more promising, he decided to continue in that line, and on the death of Captain Wiley, in January, 1S73, he opened up an office of his own, and by a close attention to business and strict integrity has built up a very large trade.

    In January, 188o, he associated with him in business his brother-in-law, Charles E. Holloway, under the firm name of C. E. Coffin & Company, investment bankers and brokers. The firm buys and sells real estate, takes charge of rental property, makes mortgage loans in which it handles large amounts of eastern capital, and represents a number of first-class fire insurance companies.

    In 1883 the firm moved into Mr. Coffin's new block, in East Market street, where it has one of the most complete and handsomely furnished offices in the west. Of this firm it can be said, that there is none other that has taken a greater interest in the development of the city. It has at all times figured prominently in all movements looking to this end







Charles E. Coffin, formerly president of the Central Trust Company of Indianapolis and now treasurer of the Star Publishing Company, has had an active position in business and civic affairs at the capital for nearly half a century.


He was born at Salem, Washington county, Indiana, son of Zachariah T. and Caroline (Armfield) Coffin. His father was a tanner by trade, and enjoyed a highly respected place in his community and served as justice of the peace. In 1862 the family removed to Bloomington, Indiana.

It was in that university town that Charles E. Coffin acquired part of his education. At the age of twenty he came to Indianapolis and went to work for the real estate firm of Wylie & Martin. At the end of six years his experience and other qualifications justified him in setting up a business of his own, and for over thirty years Mr. Coffin was one of the leading experts in real values and in handling many of the larger operations involving real estate in the city. He was not only a broker, but has to his credit the opening up and placing on the market of a number of subdivisions in and around Indianapolis.

In 1899 Mr. Coffin organized the Central Trust Company and was it president until the company sold its building and business to the Farmers Trust Company. Mr. Coffin was also one of the organizers of the Indianapolis and Eastern Railroad Company, was one of its first stockholders and for a number of years its vie president. He still has a number of interests in business organizations, but give most of his time to his duties as treasurer of the Star Publishing Company.

Mr. Coffin takes a due degree of proper pride in the fact that he was one of the organizers and incorporators of the Indianapolis Commercial Club in 1890 and was closely identified with the organization through its great constructive work in the making of a modern municipality. He served as its president of the club in 1900. He was also one of the incorporators and served as a director of the Country Club and he Woodstock Club, has bee a director of the Indianapolis Art Association, has served as member of the Board of Trade, and is now serving his twentieth years on the City Board of Park Commissioners. He is a charter member of the Contemporary Club, the University Club, the Marion Club, the Society of Colonial Wars, and treasurer of the Indiana Historical Society. Mr. Coffin is a republican, a member of the Methodist Episcopal Church, is a thirty-second degree Mason, and a member of Murat Temple of the Mystic Shrine.

Indiana and Indianans : a history of aboriginal and territorial Indiana and the century of statehood Chicago: American Historical Society, 1919, Dunn, Jacob Piatt, pg. 1745-6






Charles E. Coffin. In the enlisting of men of enterprise, ability and integrity in the furtherance of her financial, commerical , and industrial activities, is mainly due the precedence and prosperity if Indiana's capital city, and as representative of the progressive spirit which has brought about the upbuilding of "Greater Indianapolis: it is consonant that in this publication special recognition be accorded to Charles E. Coffin, president of the Central Trust Company, which has been prominent in its sphere of operations in our favored commonwealth.


Mr. Coffin finds a due measure of satisfaction in reverting to the fine old Hoosier state as the place of his nativity. He was born at Salem, Washington, county Indiana, on the 13th of July 1849, and is a son of Zachariah T. and Caroline (Armfield) Coffin, who removed from Salem to Bloomington, this state, in 1862. There they passed the residue of their lives, honored by all who knew them. The father was a tanner and justice of the peace.

Charles E. Coffin secured his rudimentary education in the schools of his native village and thereafter continued his studies in the public schools of Bloomington, where he was reared to maturity. In 1869, when twenty years of age, Mr. Coffin came to Indianapolis, where he assumed a position in the employ of Wylie & Martin, leading real estate dealers. He remained with this firm for a period of six years, at the expiration of which he established himself independently in the same line of business, in which his operations eventually attained large proportions. He built up a most successf ul enterprise and incidentally did much to further the material upbuilding of Indianapolis through the handling of both business and residence properties and the opening of suburban subdivisions. He continued to be actively engaged in the real estate business until 1899, when he effected the organization of the Central Trust Company, of which he has since been president and which, under his able administration as chief executive, has become one of the strongest financial and fiduciary institutions institutions of its kind in the state. Mr. Coffin as also one of the organizers of the Indianapolis & Eastern Railroad Company, in which he was one of the original stockholders and of which he served as vice-president for a number of years. He is a valued member of the Indianapolis Board of Trade, of whose board of governors he was a member for one term. He was one of the organizers and incorporators of the Commercial Club and was its president in 1900. He was one of the incorporators of the Country Club and a member of its directorate, and is a director of the Art Association of Indianapolis, which controls the Heron Art Institute. For the past eleven years he has been a member of the city board of park commissioners, and at the present time is the senior member in service in this important municipal body.

From the foregoing statements, brief as they are, it will be seen that Mr. Coffin is animated by broad public spirit and civic loyalty and that he has touched the various activities which make for advancement and prosperity and conserve consecutive progress in the beautiful capital city of Indiana. He was one of the charter members of the Columbia Club and is a member of the Marion Club, both representative social organizations of Indianapolis, and he takes deep interest in the affairs of the Indiana Historical Society, of which he is treasurer. In politics, though never animated by aught of ambition for official preferment, Mr. Coffin gives a stanch allegiance to the republican party, and his religious faith is that of the Methodist Episcopal Church. In the Masonic fraternity he has attained to the thirty-second degree of the Ancient Accepted Scottish Rite and is also identified with its adjunct organization, the Ancient Arabic Order of the Nobles of the Mystic Shrine, in which he has affiliation in Murat Temple.

Greater Indianapolis : the history, the industries, the institutions, and the people of a city of homes Chicago: Lewis Pub. Co., 1910, Dunn, Jacob Piatt pg. 703-4






CHARLES EMMET COFFIN has been one of the prominent figures of Indianapolis commercial and civic affairs for over forty years. Mr. Coffin is a native of Indiana, born at Salem July 13, 1856, son of Zachariah T. and Caroline (Armfield) Coffin. He represents the seventh generation of descent from Tristram Coffin, of Nantucket, Massachusetts, one of the early pioneers of New England.

As a youth Mr. Coffin was impressed with a sense of responsibility toward others. He attended a grammar school at Salem, his birthplace, completed his high school course at Bloomington, and spent one year in Indiana University. He had to give up his university career to go to work, turning over his wages to his parents. At the age of twenty he began his career in Indianapolis, as an employee of Wylie & Martin, real estate. Six years later he engaged in business for himself. His study and experience made him an expert in realty values. He was the medium for handling many important real estate operations in Indianapolis, and besides his brokerage business he developed and marketed several subdivisions in and around Indianapolis. His services have also gone to the broader financing of real estate ownership. He was one of the organizers of the Indiana Savings & Investment Company, incorporated in 1889, and for over forty years has been president of that institution, one of the largest of its kind in Indiana, with assets of over three million dollars. Practically all the funds of the company have been held for first loans on Indianapolis real estate.

Mr. Coffin also organized, in 1900, the Central Trust Company, which was sold to the Farmers Trust Company in 1913, and since that date he has been a member of the board of directors of the latter company. He was vice president of the Indianapolis & Eastern Traction Company from its organization in 1903 until the property was sold in 1905. Mr. Coffin in 1913 became secretary and treasurer of the Star Publishing Company, and in the same year was elected a member of its board of directors.

His part in organizations representing the larger commercial and civic interests of the city has been not less noteworthy. From 1899 to 1922 he served as a member of the board of park commissioners of Indianapolis, and for ten years of that time was president of the board. He was for four years, until 1926, president of the board of public works. Mr. Coffin was one of the organizers and incorporators of the Indianapolis Commercial Club in 1890, a club that for the first time gave an organization broadly representative of the progressive interests of the community, and under which were inaugurated a series of improvements and reforms that laid the foundation of the modern and greater city. He was chosen president of the club in 1900. He was also on the board of governors of the Indianapolis Board of Trade, has been a director of the Indianapolis Art Association, is a member of the Columbia Club and Woodstock Club of Indianapolis, and president of the board of trustees of the Meridian Street Methodist Episcopal Church, also a member of the board of trustees of the Indiana State Normal School, Terre Haute. Mr. Coffin is a member of the Society of Colonial Wars, the Indiana Historical Society, is a thirty-second degree Scottish Rite Mason and a member of Murat Temple of the Mystic Shrine.

With all his important responsibilities in business and civic affairs Mr. Coffin is known to many thousands outside the state as an authority on whist. In 1895 he published a book, The Gist of Whist, this being followed in 1907 by The Gist of Auction Bridge. Mr. Coffin is a former president of the American Whist League

He married at Indianapolis, September 20, 1897, Miss Mary H. Birch, daughter of Richard E. Birch. Her father was a steamboat captain on the Mississippi River. They have three children: Clarence E:, who married Lenora Smith; Jean Fletcher, wife of Commander J. H. Ingram, of the United States Navy; and Carolyn, wife of Charles Harvey Bradley

INDIANA ONE HUNDRED AND FIFTY YEARS OF AMERICAN DEVELOPMENT Vol. 5
By Charles Roll, A.M.
The Lewis Publishing Company, 1931






The Coffin Trophy is one of the oldest and most historic trophies in play in NABC competition. For years there was only one "National" Women's Team championship, and that was a Board-a-Match event. The Coffin Trophy, donated by Mr. Charles Emmet Coffin in 1933, was contested at the "Winter Nationals" in the days when there were only two NABC championships, Summer and Winter. Until 1976 the event was a four-session event scored by Board-A-Match and was contested as a three-session championship until 1972 and in 1975. It was then held at the Fall North American Championships until 1963. In 1976 the event became a North American Championship Women's Knockout with Swiss qualifying.

Mr. Charles Emmet Coffin was president of the Indianapolis Whist Club, the Indiana Whist Association and the American Whist League. The trophy was first awarded to the winners of the National Women's Auction Team-of-Four Championship. Until 1976 it was a four-session event scored by Board-a-Match. It was contested as a three-session championship until 1972 and in 1975. The event was held at the Fall NABC until 1963 where it was transferred to the Spring NABC. In 1976 the event became a North American Championship Women's Knockout. Then in 1986 it was switched from the Spring to the Summer NABC....

ACBL Meeting at Washington, September 12, 2002. The Coffin Trophy for the Women's Board-a-Match Team game will be replaced with the Marsha May Sternberg Memorial Trophy effective with the Fall of 2002.

Indianapolitans "as we see 'em" 1904


Club men of Indianapolis in caricature, 1913


Indianapolis Men of Affairs, 1923







Coffin, Charles Emmet, 1849-1934.
The gist of whist; being a concise guide to the modern scientific game, embracing the improved method of American leads and a complete glossary of the common and technical terms, by Charles Emmet Coffin; to which is added the laws of whist and duplicate whist as revised at the last American whist congress. 7th ed. (rev.).
New York, Brentano's [1902].
xii, 118 p., 4 p. ; 17 cm.


and


Coffin, Charles Emmet, 1849-1934.
The gist of whist, being a concise guide to the modern scientific game. To which is added The laws of whist as recently revised by the American whist congress. 10th ed. (rev.).
Indianapolis, The Bobbs-Merrill Co. [c1921].
xii, 120 p. ; 19 cm.






Dinner and toasts in honor of Senator Albert J. Beveridge. Mr. and Mrs. Charles E. Coffin, Friday evening, January 13, 1899.
by Coffin, Charles Emmet.
Indianapolis : Burford, 19--?
Call Number: B Beveridge, A.J.
Subjects Beveridge, Albert Jeremiah, 1862-1927.
Indianapolis Room Collection (Indianapolis Marion County Public Library)
Private press books
Description: 82 p.






Indianapolis City Directory, 1889. Indianapolis, IN: R.L. Polk and Co., 1889 & 1890

Name: Charles E Coffin
City: Indianapolis
State: IN
Year: 1889
Business Name: C E Coffin & Co
Location 2: 800 N Penn.

Name: Charles E Coffin; Charles E Holloway
Location 1: 90 E Market
City: Indianapolis
State: IN
Occupation: Real Estate, Mortgage Loans and Fire Ins
Year: 1889
Business Name: Coffin C E & Co

Name: Charles E Coffin
City: Indianapolis
State: IN
Occupation: president
Year: 1890
Business Name: C E Coffin & Co; the Indiana Savings and Investment Co of Indpls
Location 2: 800 N Penn.

Name: Charles E Coffin; Charles E Holloway
Location 1: 90 E Market
City: Indianapolis
State: IN
Occupation: Investment Bankers, Brokers and Dealers in Real Estate Mortgage Loans, Fire Ins
Year: 1890
Business Name: Coffin C E & Co

Name: Charles E Coffin; Daniel W Marmon; Theodore P Haughey; Charles E Holloway
Location 1: 90 E Market
City: Indianapolis
State: IN
Occupation: president; Vice-president; treasurer; secretary
Year: 1890
Business Name: Indiana Savings and Investment Company of Indianapolis The