One Branch in My Family Tree

Over the years I’ve spent a lot of time researching my genealogy. I met a distant cousin online who has done a lot of research on the family already and is writing a book on her research. She asked me if I would write a bio on my paternal grandfather and I thought I’d share that as my topic for the blog. I’ll come up with something more tantalizing next time:-)

John Coffey bio- I am the grandson of John Coffey. His youngest child Joseph, was my father. John was born in 1876 and died in 1935 when my Dad was only eight years old. It is difficult to write about someone whom you’ve never had the opportunity to meet. I have done my best and pray I’ve served his memory with respect.

John was the son of Stephen and Margaret. He was born and lived his entire life in Albany NY. His first marriage was to Margaret and they had two children, Pauline and Stephen. After the passing of his first wife he married my grandmother Charlotte Persons in 1924 and they had two children, Kathryn and Joseph. A photograph dated November 2, 1922 of the Chorus for the Diamond Jubilee of the Albany Diocese shows John and Charlotte among the group. Judging by their distance in the group of nearly 90, they may have been acquaintances at this time but it wouldn’t appear the romance had begun yet. John graduated from Albany High School in 1892 and began a professional career following in his father’s footsteps in the printing industry. I’ve located a few obituaries for John and the most eloquent I’ve decided to include with this bio because it describes his professional life and the respect he received from his peers. “The ready and poised pencil of John Coffey never again will swoop downward like a hawk to pluck an error from copy or proof. For John Coffey is dead and we who knew him feel deep sorrow and loss. John Coffey had been a proofreader in Albany 40 years or more. His father before him was a proofreader and both father and son were known as the best proofreaders in the business. In the publishing and printing world, the proofreader is an important person. He is the final rectifier of error. Writers and editors and printers make mistakes but the proofreader must make none and he must correct those that others make. We knew John Coffey would not let an error slip through. We depended on him always. If we knew he had read a proof we knew that proof was clean and errorless. Nor did we begrudge him the pleasure he took in pointing out to us mistakes we had made. We knew John Coffey knew. He had read the proof of a many-volumed encyclopedia from A-Z and it seemed to us that he had retained in his mind every fact and figure in that encyclopedia. If you asked John Coffey about some ancient king he could tell you and he could spell the name. If you asked him about some small community or even a street in some distant city he could tell you. John Coffey had an education that could scarcely be equaled. He was a keen and faithful man in his place. To him the slightest error was almost a great wrong. We wondered how he could do so much and how he could know so much. And withal, he was a most enjoyable companion and friend. John Coffey did his work well in the world and he made work lighter for others.” The measure of a man is by the lives he touched. Judging by this well penned obit, it appears John was a success in life and his memory should be respected as such.

There has always been family lore that he died of a broken heart while in New York City searching for his estranged daughter Pauline. Estranged according to that same lore because of his marriage to my grandmother after Pauline’s mother passed away. Truth be told from the information I’ve found he was on one of his and my grandmothers frequent vacation trips to NY to enjoy the culture. Not nearly as romantic as succumbing to a broken heart. However, in a sense he did. He died from the effects of a heart attack which newspaper documentation states he had complained to family and friends for the previous few weeks. No one knows to this day what became of Pauline and since she probably passed away decades ago… Google has become my friend in trying to find her. Maybe when/IF I do that will be a blog worthy story. Wish me luck!

Steve