Author: Coffeen, John F.
Biography:
COFFEEN, John F. (1800-37: ancestry.com)
Confirmation is needed, but according to an Ancestry family tree, he was born in Jefferson County NY in 1800, the son of Reform (Foster) and Goldsmith Coffeen. His middle name was Foster. In the preface to his one published volume, The Fate of Genius (1835), he explains that he had first written on the subject for the University Literary Society of Miami University in Oxford OH in the 1820s, and had then turned it into a verse composition in 1834-5, when he made a collection of occasional poems written from the age of fourteen. He is on the register of students for the university in 1827, 1828, and (as a sophomore) 1830, listed as resident in Warren OH where he died in Feb. 1837. No record has been found of a marriage. (ancestry.com 14 Aug. 2025; Miami University Archives, email, 30 Apr. 2018) HJ