TOMBSTONE TUESDAY - LEILA MARCUS COFFIN

TOMBSTONE TUESDAY - LEILA MARCUS COFFIN (1821-1875)

Right inside the gate, behind the historical markers in the Indianola Cemetery, is an obelisk tombstone with a heavy block base. The pinnacle of the obelisk is long gone and its whereabouts is unknown. On each panel of the base there is a name, or names of members of the Coffin family. This fact is nothing different than hundreds of other headstones in cemeteries scattered throughout this country, for many families share a stone in remembrance of their loved ones. The interesting thing about this one is that most, if not all the names carved on it are not resting under it, like the pinnacle of the stone their whereabouts are also unknown. One of the names is that of Lelia M. Coffin, wife of Alfred Coffin, born on May 23, 1821, died September 16, 1875. 

Lelia Coffin was born Lellias Marcus to Kezia Page and Moses Marcus in Paddington in Westminster of greater London. Her father Moses was a schoolmaster and minister in the Church of England. At the time Lelia was born her father was an assistant clergyman at the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Northhampton, and on January 1, 1822, she was baptized there as Kezia Jane Lellias. 

In 1834 Reverend Marcus headed alone to America and arrived in New York in April of that year. By June he had found employment as a schoolteacher in Ontario, Canada. In January of 1835, before he was able to send for his family to join him, his wife Kezia died leaving their 4 young children alone in Bletchingly, Surrey, south of London. By the time the children were able to make the trip across the Atlantic and reunite with their father, he had become chaplain at the Sailors’ Snug Harbor, a retirement home for seamen on Staten Island. In 1838 Moses moved his family to Nantucket where he started an Episcopal church. 

Lelia met Alfred Coffin there, and they were married in 1841 by her father. Alfred was born in Massachusetts in 1821 to Gorham and Rebecca (Mitchell) Coffin. After they wed the couple lived in Nantucket for a few years and then Alfred became a farmer in Chautauqua County New York. He began speculating in horse trading which failed and in 1846 the couple and 3 of their 6 children moved to Lavaca, Texas, close to his brother Arthur Coffin. 

The 1850 Census shows the family living in Lavaca and Alfred listed as a laborer working as a packet master in Indianola and Corpus Christi port towns. Lelia and Alfred’s children are listed there as well. Rebecca Mitchell age 8, twin boys Arthur and William ages 6. By 1860 the family had moved to Indianola, and Alfred’s occupation was listed as a sailor. The family had grown as well adding Frances “Frank” age 8, Isabela age 5, also listed is a girl A. R. Coffin age 3, but I have not found that she was their child. In 1864 Lelia and Alfred had a son, E. M. Coffin, but the child died in 1869 at age 4. In 1853 Alfred Coffin was appointed the first keeper of Swash Lighthouse, the sister lighthouse to Halfmoon Reef Lighthouse, in Matagorda Bay by Indianola, TX. While he was keeper Lelia signed on as his assistant keeper until his death. Exactly how Alfred died and where he was buried is lost to time, but he passed away before 1875. 

The Coffin twin boys, Arthur and William were veterans of the Civil War both serving as privates in the Confederate Army. After the war, both sons settled in Indianola. William married Addie (Ward) Coffin. They had two children Oscar and Zuileka. William was a stockman, and his brand was the shape of a coffin. Arthur Coffin in 1870 listed his occupation as a clerk in a drugstore. Sometime after 1875 he married Lizzie (Perrin) Coffin. Rebecca Mitchell (Coffin) Smith married George D. Smith, a carpenter and they had children Alfred, Lelia, Mary, Annie, and Frank. In the 1870 census Frank Coffin, 18, worked as a clerk in a store and was a member of the Indianola Hook and Ladder Company. Isabelle (Coffin) Seeligson married Lewis Seeligson, and they had children Sallie B. Pettus and Walter Mitchell Seelingson.

Alfred and Lelia Coffin were pioneers of Indianola, and their children planted their roots deep in the sands of Matagorda Bay too. On the 1870 U.S. Census, Lelia Coffin, 46, is living in Indianola with her children Arthur, 26, Isabelle (Belle),15, Frank, 18, and William, 26. It was the last time Lelia’s name would appear on a census. 

On Wednesday night September 15, 1875, the dark clouds that had hung over Matagorda Bay for days began blowing a heavy northeast wind, which was its most distinguishable feature. A steady and heavy rain came with it and was rapidly filling the bay. For the citizens of Indianola, this was nothing unfamiliar as other storms that had traveled through the area, and it was thought that as night fell upon the city the powerful gale would calm, so the citizens slept well that night. When the sun rose over the bay on Thursday, September 16th, they all became much more concerned. The water had submerged the eastern part of town. Water was breaking over Main Street in many places as the steady gale blew waves of the bay waters into the city. This gale became a hurricane and then turned into a cyclone. The city of Indianola was full of people from across the state who had come to Indianola for a famous murder trial that was part of what was known statewide as the Sutton-Taylor Feud. The trial was set to begin that same morning. Inns, hotels, boarding houses, and homes were full of visitors and journalists. As the day progressed the wind blew with a fury and the angry waves of Matagorda Bay crashed into the city and way out into the prairie beyond. The citizens of Indianola had taken all the forenoon boats and were transferring as many people as possible from the lower part of Main Street to places further up in the city that they thought would be safe. Business owners and residents were hurriedly trying to put as many valuables and goods in the safest places they could find. By noon that day the water had risen to several feet deep and as it ran rapidly through the cross streets it became clear that saving property was futile and that life alone was the only thing that could possibly be saved. The waters were rushing through the streets with such strength that it was impossible to keep one’s footing. Ropes were strung through town and both boats, and people used them to pull them to the upper part of town where it was safer. Many buildings and houses along the bay front succumbed to the storm that afternoon. Accidents and dangers took place throughout the day and had been experienced by many visitors and citizens alike, but that proved to be light compared to the horrors that that night brought. 

The water had risen to about 5ft. deep and the highest points were now engulfed by the water of the bay. Places that had been thought to be places of strength and refuge now proved to be in danger. During the night many of these buildings began to break up and give way to the fury of the cyclone. Water rose to neck deep and even the strongest of buildings were reeling and rocking in the lashing water and winds. That night many men, women, and children had to bravely face the angry storm and await their expected doom. Many acts of heroism took place that night with people sacrificing their lives for the safety of the ones they loved. Others could not beat the strength of the angry wind and waters and save their loved ones or themselves. Many fathers gathered their families and got them to safety only to rush out into the fury to save youths, elderly, and others crying for help. Some of those succumbed to the water while giving another safety. By midnight, the storm had left a trail of death and destruction unlike anyone could have imagined. Animals, pieces of buildings, homes, furniture, and bodies were floating through the town and out for miles into the prairie beyond. Everything still standing was battered and broken so that it looked like it could give way at any moment. Out among the death and debris were buildings floating down the current, some with as many as 10 to 20 people in them, and everywhere were people; men, women, and children in all sorts of dress and undress and injury clinging to pieces of wreckage and floating down through the streets with a wailing of helplessness and fear that can never be forgotten. Then just as quick as the blink of an eye, the wind changed to northwest and continued with an increase of violence, and with this change, all that had somehow withstood the worst of the storm was again in danger, as all of the debris, wreckage, and the 18 hours worth of rain and water was blown out of the prairie and returned to the bay taking most of what remained in the city with it. 

It was during this part of the storm that the home of William and Addie Coffin gave way. William and Addie and their two children clung to a makeshift raft and were sucked out of the home by the rushing water. Addie clung to her children, and William clung to her and the wreckage. The water proved to be too fierce, and Oscar and Zuileka were swept from Addie’s arms carried towards the pass and lost. William hung on to Addie with all his strength, but she was exhausted and slipped from his grasp and try as he might he could not save her. Addie was 32 years old. Lelia, William and Arthur’s mother, was rushed away by the racing current. 

William and his life saving wreckage landed on shore close to where his wife Addies body had washed ashore. Mr. Tom Allen found the older child’s body on Sunday about 6 miles west of Indianola. He was buried where he was found. The body of the youngest child was never found or recovered. Lelia’s body was also never found. The Swash Lighthouse that she had tended with her husband Alfred was totally destroyed in the storm. 

Frank Coffin worked through the storm with others trying to get others to safety. He wrote about his experience that night. “Mr. W. H. Crain (who was afterwards congressman) and I assisted friends into Mr. Regan’s home. We watched the on rushing, mountain high waves coming in from the bay and when the wind changed, we thought it our doom. Mr. Crain offered a prayer of thanks for deliverance from the fury of the storm. Later in years, I took occasion to remind him of his wonderful supplication. I said: ‘He made a miserable failure as a lawyer, when he might have been a Bishop, or maybe a Pope’.”

Hundreds of people drowned, were missing, or never found after the storm of September 16, 1875. It took about one third of the city of Indianola with it. While the city did slowly rebuild and recover it was never the up-and-coming port city it once was. A trip to the Indianola Cemetery will reveal the number of headstones, that have not been swept away in one of the many storms that have come through since, that show the date of death as September 16, 1875. 

Some of them are like the Coffin Family Headstone. Like the pinnacle of the obelisk, those whose names are etched in memory are missing from their place under their stone. There are many more just like them who do not have the marking of their name to let us know they were once here. We should never forget to tread lightly when we visit what remains of Indianola, for there are many souls all around us that deserve to be remembered too. 

Written by Sheryl Cuellar

Indianola Scrapbook

Indianola: The Mother of West Texas by Malsch

Indianola and Matagorda Island 1837-1887 by Wolff

U.S. Federal Census 1850, 1860, 1870

www.genealogy.com Coffin Family in Texas 12/21/1999

NHA Nantucket Historical Association 530 – Coffin family papers 1707-1851

www.vitabrevis.americanancestors.org  A name and a history. 09/14/2017 by Pamela Atheran Filbert 

**Texas Genealogy Trails: Calhoun County, Texas 1875 Indianola Hurricane: source: The Victoria Advocate, Victoria, Texas September 24, 1875

**For an interesting and in depth look at the 1875 Hurricane at Indianola, Texas I suggest this source 
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