The Latin Cophinum was usually a basket. When Wickliffe translated the Gospel, he rendered the verse at Matt. xiv. 20, "They took up of that which remained over of the broken pieces, twelve coffins full." The name as a family name is still found in England, but all the Coffins in America are descended from Tristram Coffin, who sailed from Plymouth, England, in 1642, and in 1660 settled in Nantucket. The most ancient seat of the name and family of the Coffins in England is Portledge, in the parish of Alwington. To his house, and last earthly home, in Brookline, Mass., built under his own eye, and in which Charles Carleton Coffin died, he gave the name of Alwington. "Carleton's" grandfather, Peter Coffin, married Rebecca Hazeltine, of Chester, N. H., whose ancestors had come from England to Salem, Mass., in 1637, and settled at Bradford. Carleton has told something of his ancestry and kin in his "History of Boscawen." In his later years, in the eighties of this century, at the repeated and urgent request of his wife, Carleton wrote out, or, rather, jotted down, some notes for the story of the earlier portion of his life. He was to have written a volume--had his wife succeeded, after due perseverance, in overcoming his modesty--entitled "Recollections of Seventy Years." To this, we, also, that is, the biographer and others, often urged him. It was not to be. Excepting, then, these hastily jotted notes, Mr. Coffin never indicated, gave directions, or prepared materials for his biography. To the story of his life, as gathered from his own rough notes, intended for after-reference and elaboration, let us at once proceed, without further introduction. CHAPTER II. OF REVOLUTIONARY SIRES. The Coffins of America are descended from Tristram Coffin of England and Nantucket. Charles Carleton Coffin was born of Revolutionary sires. He first saw light in the southwest corner room of a house which stood on Water Street, in Boscawen, N. H., which his grandfather, Captain Peter Coffin, had built in 1766.