450 



PIONEERS OF SCIENCE IN AMERICA. 



entered upon an appointment as tutor in Williams College. 

 During his stay at Williamstown he became interested in trac- 

 ing the early land allotments of the settlement, which were 

 somewhat complicated. He prepared a wall map of the town, 

 which was engraved and published in Boston. It became a 

 saying among the farmers of the vicinity that there was a 

 young man at the college who could tell them more about the 

 boundaries of their lands than their fathers had ever made 

 known to them. He retained his tutorship for three years, but 

 the salary of four hundred dollars, which was all that the col- 

 lege could afford to pay, was too small for the needs of a 

 growing family. Consequently, in October, 1843, Mr. Coffin 

 removed to South Norwalk, Conn., to become the principal of 

 the academy in that flourishing village. Here he prospered ; 

 his circle of meteorological correspondence widened, and abun- 

 dant facts for his researches were gathered from the logbooks 

 of New York sea captains and the library of Yale College. In 

 1846 he was called to the chair of Mathematics and Astronomy 

 in Lafayette College, which he rilled to the time of his death. 



Twenty-seven years of untiring labour, carried on in a truly 

 self-sacrificing spirit, amidst circumstances which might have 

 discouraged a less noble nature, his great success as a teacher, 

 his quiet but never-flagging enthusiasm, and the beneficent in- 

 fluence he exerted on his pupils, made him one of the main 

 pillars of that institution during a long period of great depres- 

 sion. He lived, however, to see Lafayette College rise to the 

 honourable position she now occupies among the American 

 seminaries of learning. 



Mr. Coffin married, December 5, 1833, Aurelia Medici, eldest 

 daughter of the Rev. Ebenezer Jennings, of Dalton, Mass. 

 She had been one of his pupils, when, as a college student, 

 young Coffin taught the winter school in her native town. 

 She proved to him a most devoted helpmate, and years after 

 her death Prof. Coffin said, " If I have accomplished anything 

 worth speaking of, I owe it all to her aid, consideration, and 

 thoughtful carefulness." Three children were the fruit of this 

 happy union. The first, a daughter, died at the age of twenty 

 years. The second is his son, Selden Jennings, who succeeded 

 to his father's professorship at Lafayette. The youngest, an- 

 other daughter, became the wife of the Rev. John C. Clyde, 

 D. D. Prof. Coffin was a second time married, March 12, 1851, 



