Person:Henry Coffeen (6)

Henry was one of the original pioneer settlers of Watertown, New York. The town of Watertown had been surveyed in 1796 and divided into fifty-two lots of from 450 to 625 acres each, and Coffeen in company with Zachariah Butterfield purchased considerable acreage in the fall of 1799. In March of 1800, anxious to establish a homestead on his newly acquired land, he loaded his possessions upon an ox sled and, with his wife and four children, penetrated the wilderness from Lowville. Henry built his first home, a log dwelling, on a site which later became the corner of Washington and State Streets, the forerunner of a very fine house which stood on that site until 1856. Soon after his arrival, he was joined by Zachariah Butterfield who built his cabin nearby and during the course of the year, others, destined to play an important part in the development of the future city of Watertown, arrived with their families.

Coffeen, who had been a man of prominence and importance in his native New Hampshire, contributed a great deal to the new settlement. The uneveness and apparent unproductiveness of the soil were more than counter balanced in the discerning minds of these pioneers by the possibilities of the immense hydraulic power available from the numerous falls of the Black River at this point. A bridge and dam was one of the first projects constructed in 1803 by Coffeen and Andrew Edmunds. The same year, Jonathan Cowan built the first grist-mill while Coffeen soon added a saw and grist mill a little below the bridge.

Coffeen, as befitted a man of his talents, was appointed first postmaster in 1804, elected County Clerk in 1805, and in 1809 he founded Watertown's first newspaper, the "American Eagle", which remained under his ownership until sold to Jairus Rich some years later. In 1818, Henry Coffeen, in whom the pioneering spirit must have been strongly ingrained, turned his thoughts westward. He removed and settled in Edwardsvill, Illinois, where, unfortunately, his death occurred the following year at about the age of 58.

source: a record furnished by the UTICA Mutual Insurance Company to go with a painting of the Henry Coffeen family by E. N. Clark