Delta County CO Archives Biographies.....Coffey, Robert J. April 14, 1839 - ?
************************************************

Copyright.  All rights reserved.

http://www.usgwarchives.net/copyright.htm

http://www.usgwarchives.net/co/cofiles.htm

************************************************



File contributed for use in USGenWeb Archives by:
Judy Crook jlcrook@rof.net December 19, 2005, 2:41 pm

Author: Progressive Men of Western Colorado

     Robert J. Coffey, of Delta county, who lives half a mile northwest of the

town of the same name and is one of the experimenting, progressive and

successful fruit-growers of the Western slope, giving studious attention to his

business at all times and seasons, and applying the results of his study and

observation in such a way as to secure the largest returns for his labor and

intelligence.  He was born in Cumberland county, Pennsylvania, on April 14,

1839, and is the son of James and Eliza (Savage) Coffey, the father born at

Wilmington, Delaware, on April 11, 1795, and the mother in Baltimore, Maryland,

on October 12, 1803.  They both moved to Pennsylvania in childhood with their

parents, and in that state they passed the remainder of their lives, the mother

dying on August 30, 1871, at the age of sixty-eight, and the father on October

2, 1878, at that of eighty-three.  The father was a farmer and lumber merchant,

and owned and operated four saw mills.  Their son Robert received a good

education, remaining at school until he reached the age of nineteen.  He then

began teaching in his native county and continued two years.  The Civil war

breaking out soon after the end of that period, he gave up the mercantile

business in which he had been a partner for about one year and joined the Union

army in a troop of one thousand five hundred volunteers called at that time, the

spring of 1861, the Minute Men of the Border.  This troop preserved its separate

identity until the fall of 1861 and was then merged in the One Hundred and

Thirtieth Pennsylvania Infantry, in which Mr. Coffey served until the fall of

1864, when he went into the Two Hundred and Second Pennsylvania Infantry, and in

that regiment he remained to the close of the war.  The regiment was attached to

the Army of the Potomac and participated in more than twenty-eight battles, all

the leading ones in which that great fighting organization took part.  In the

battle of Cold Harbor his troop lost over one thousand one hundred men. After

the war Mr. Coffey returned to his Pennsylvania home and taught a term of

school.  In the fall of 1866 he engaged in newspaper work, becoming editor and

proprietor of the Valley Sentinel, published at Shippensburg.  He conducted this

paper until 1872, at which time he sold it and established another in the same

town, of which he was proprietor three years.  In 1875 he sold the second paper

and moved to Lansing, Michigan, where he worked for the Lake Shore & Michigan

Southern Railroad as purchaser of timber until the spring of 1888.  He then

changed his residence to Ellsworth county, Kansas, where he established a paper

called the Eagle.  In the same fall he established another called the Junction

City Sentinel, and he conducted both until April, 1890.  Then selling both, he

came to Colorado on a visit to a brother-in-law in Delta county. He was so well

pleased with the country and its promise of future growth that he determined to

remain.  He started the Labor, a newspaper at Delta, which he managed for a

year, then dropped it and turned his attention to raising fruit, taking up for

the purpose the forty acres of land on which he now lives.  This was the last

camping place of the Ute Indians before they left their reservation for Utah,

and on it they spent their last night in this section.  This land was also the

tract on which the United States soldiers were stationed in their last trouble

with these Indians.  Two of them were killed and buried on this land, and Mr.

Coffey gives their graves careful attention.  He took up this land in the autumn

of 1890, cleared it of the timber which then covered it, and in 1893 set out one

hundred fruit trees.  Since then he has planted twenty acres in fruit, making

first careful experiments as to what variety are best adapted to the soil and

climate of this section.  He has now so many trees that he can hardly make a

fair estimate of what his yield will be when all are in good bearing order.  But

he has a good orchard and is accounted one of the wisest and most judicious

fruit men in the county.  On September 12, 1866, he was united in marriage with

Miss Mary E. Brown, a native of Elmira, New York, born on February 15, 1841. 

Her parents were Daniel D. and Mary L. (Bulklin) Brown, who were born in New

York state.  The father died on September 8, 1851.  Mr. and Mrs. Coffey have had

four children, Fannie L. and Rena J., who are deceased, and Mary E. and Daisy

L., who are living.  In politics Mr. Coffey is a Democrat, and in fraternal

circles belongs to the Masonic order, the Odd Fellows, the Red Men and the

Knights of Pythias.  He has been a prominent and progressive man in several

states, and his record appears in Bates’s History of Pennsylvania, the History

of Cumberland County in that state, the History of Medina County, Ohio, a

History of Michigan published in 1887, and a History of Kansas published about 1889.

Additional Comments:
From Progressive Men of Western Colorado.  Chicago:  A.W. Bowen & Co., 1905



File at: http://files.usgwarchives.net/co/delta/bios/coffey69gbs.txt

This file has been created by a form at http://www.genrecords.org/cofiles/

File size: 5.6 Kb