The life and times of George Y. Coffin
In the fall of 1896, summer was reluctant to leave the Schuylkill Valley, extending her stay for almost all of November. Finally, during the month’s penultimate night, winter crept in and Pottstown residents awoke on Monday, Nov. 30, to find that 2 inches of snow had fallen, creating, what a writer for the Pottstown Daily News described as, a “landscape that was white and decidedly wintry looking.”
That afternoon under gray
skies and subfreezing temperatures undertaker Maxwell’s hearse, drawn by two black caparisoned horses, led a small procession of mourners into Edgewood Cemetery in the east end of Pottstown. They gathered around the grave to witness the burial of George Yost Coffin a 46-year-old man who died in Washington, D.C., two days before.
Today, his name sparks no recognition, but in 1896 tens of thousands of Americans knew of him, or at least recognized his work, because Coffin was an artist and an editorial cartoonist, whose drawings appeared frequently in Washington, D.C., newspapers.
George Coffin was born in Pottstown on March 3, 1850. His parents weren’t Pottstonians. His mother, Sarah Harrington, was born Dec. 22, 1821, in Stephentown, N.Y., a small town just outside of Troy and his father, George Coffin, was from Massachusetts. It was a family tie that brought the Coffins to Pottstown. In 1844, Sarah’s sister, Mary, married in Washington, D.C., Jacob Yost, a U.S. congressman who represented the 5th District of Pennsylvania, which then included Montgomery and Delaware counties.
Yost was a 44-year-old widower who was born in Pottsgrove Township but later moved to Pottstown when his term ended. The newly married couple made Pottstown their permanent residence, living in, what for years would be called the Yost Mansion, on the southwest corner of High and Charlotte Streets (the site is now a large parking lot).
The Harrington sisters were very close and it was this intimacy that drew Sarah Harrington Coffin to Pottstown. The exact date of the Coffins arrival isn’t known, but George was born in the Yost mansion in March 1850, and the U.S.
Census of 1850, taken a few months later, shows Sarah Coffin living in Pottstown’s East Ward with her infant George Y. and a young serving
girl. She was in her 30th year, and George would be her only child. Her husband is not listed in the census record.
The Coffins moved to Washington, D.C., by 1858, and it was here that George was raised and educated. He studied law at Columbian College (now George Washington University) graduating in 1873. A year before earning his degree Coffin took a job with the Federal Treasury Department, a position he never relinquished.
Although George Coffin was by vocation a bureaucrat, his true passion was drawing and sketching, so while he spent his days in a government office, much of his free time he spent working as an artist.
In the mid-1870s Coffin began drawing for the short-lived Washington Illustrated Chronicle, and then as a freelance artist contributed to a series of publications that included Harper’s Illustrated, Puck, Evening Star, Critic, Sunday Herald, Washington Post, and The National Tribune.
A liberal in philosophy, he championed many of
the controversial causes of the time such as women’s rights, immigration reform, civil service reform, workers’ rights, and anti-monopoly legislation.
In contrast to modern political cartoonists, Coffin’s work is often complex, containing not only every day imagery but classical and biblical allusions, that seem archaic, but were readily understood by educated people of the era.
George Coffin worked hard but he was not a recluse. From what little is known of his personal life, he was a convivial bachelor who didn’t allow clerking and his art to interfere with socializing.
A friend wrote that “For twenty years his personality was one of the most interesting in the Capital City,” citing as proof of his conviviality his “membership in many social and fraternal organizations, including the Grid Iron Club.” Also, over the years he become close personal friends with some of D.C.’s movers and shakers, including the witty Samuel “Sunset” Cox a long time powerful Democratic congressman.
Although their stay in Pottstown was brief, George Coffin and his mother, Sarah, maintained very close ties with their aunt/ sister, Mary Yost and as a result they traveled here very frequently.
Early in 1891, during the course of one these visits, Sarah Coffin became ill and on March 4 “very unexpectedly died of a bronchial affection and a severe cold.”
The two tiny families had developed such a close attachment that Sarah wished to be buried in the Yost family lot in Pottstown’s Edgewood Cemetery.
Although Sarah Coffin was only a few months from her 70th birthday, her death was a severe blow to George. The two had always been very close, and Coffin freely admitted “my mother was the inspiration of all my work.” Following Coffin’s death, his aunt Mary noted that George had been “deeply affected by her [his mother’s] passing”, and “never again had the same zest for life.”
In 1894 Coffin developed a “slight loco-motor ataxia,” or a loss of motor coordination. Whatever it was that afflicted him it was a wasting disease that did its job slowly but thoroughly.
Despite his gradual physical decline Coffin continued to draw, so as one of his eulogists wrote “there was scarcely a day when the work of his pencil did not appear in the columns of the paper [The Washington Post] which he faithfully served.”
On Nov. 17, 1896, Coffin sent his latest drawing to the Post, and 11 days later, Nov. 28 he was dead. His only known survivors, in addition to his aunt, Mary Yost, were an uncle in Troy, N.Y., and another aunt in Los Angeles, Calif. In keeping with his wishes his body was brought to Pottstown and buried alongside his mother. On his tombstone is the inscription “An enthusiastic exponent of the beautiful in art and literature. He still lives in the creations of his genius.”