casions, shown the spirit of a
careful historical student and of an intelligent and zealous antiquary.
His recent contributions to that excellent periodical, "The New England
Historical and Genealogical Register," which has become of inestimable
value, as a collection of facts illustrative of early New England
history and biography, have given great pleasure to multitudes of
readers,--especially his vivid and graphic descriptions of certain
ancient and storied mansions in Boston and Cambridge, and of their former
inhabitants. Let us hope that researches of such abundant interest and
value will soon claim and gain a still larger share of the public
attention in a collected form.

MY DEAR SIR,--In your reminiscences of Newburyport you must not
forget Joshua Coffin its historian,--one of the best of men, whom
no one knew but to love. I see him now as he came to visit me
several years ago, when he was representing his native town in the
General Court, a fresh, hale, cheery gentleman, full of pleasant
anecdotes relating to the past. He owned and occupied the Coffin
mansion, which had been the abode of seven generations of his
family and name. Out of its portals had issued numberless admirable
men and women, and from among the former, a large share of college
graduates, at Harvard and other New England colleges, of lawyers,
clergy, and soldiers, to do good service in their day and
generation.

At his suggestion, I visited this ancient dwelling which was
erected about 1649, by Mr. Somerby, the widow of whose progenitor
Tristram Coffin, Jr., married. This Tristram was the eldest son of
another Tristram, first of the race in America, who not many years
before, in 1642, came over from Brixton, near Plymouth, in
Devonshire, bringing with him his mother, and two sisters,--Eunice
who married William Butler, and Mary who became the wife of
Alexander Adams, of Boston. He brought with him also several sons
and daughters, to whom were added others born to him on this side
the ocean. His family in the home country had shown the same
tenacity and steadfastness, exemplified by their long continued
residence at Newburyport; for at Alwington and Portledge in Devon,
they had flourished, if not from the flood, from periods very
remote; for according to the historical statement, the Normans when
they came over in the eleventh century found them there, and left
them unmolested; and there