Rice & Sarah "Sally" Bradford Coffey

This Rice Coffey was a son of the Rev. James Coffey and his wife Elizabeth Cleveland.  He is thought to have been born on Apr. 17, 1766 in Amherst Co., VA and to have died on July 24, 1853 in Bedford Co., TN.

Rice wrote a letter* to his nephew Thomas Jefferson Coffey - son of Ambrose, a younger brother to Rice - from Shelbyville on Nov. 15, 1844 which reads:

Dear Jefferson:

I received your letter of the 16th of September and have read it with entertaining interest. Indeed, it is always a source of gratification to me to hear that my friends are doing well.

You request some information respecting the history of our ancestors. I have no written biography of the Coffee family and therefore can only relate to you such facts as have come within my own recollection and such as have reached me by tradition.

I remember to have seen my paternal grandfather. His name was John Coffee, and he was raised in one of the lower counties of Virginia and died in Albemarle. My grandmother's maiden name was Jane Graves, and my father's name was James Coffee.  He also was raised in the lower part of Essex and from thence to Albemarle, where your father Ambrose Coffee was born in the year 1762. From this county my father (James) removed to Amherst and here his children grew up to manhood. My mother's maiden name was Elizabeth Cleveland. My maternal grandfathers's name was Alexander Cleveland. He was a descendant of the English and was an own cousin of Oliver Cromwell, a gentleman who figured conspicuously in the sixteenth century. He was raised in Virginia and born in the year 1663 and died in 1775, at the age of 112 years.

My father was born in 1729 and died in 1786. His children were nine sons and two daughters. My brothers names were John, Archelaus, James, Reuben, Ambrose, Eli, Joel and Lewis Coffee. They are all dead save Eli and Lewis, the first of whom resides in Missouri and the other in Kentucky.

I became acquainted with your maternal grandfather Jesse Moore about the close of the revolutionary war. He then lived in Burke County, N.C., where you were born. He was born in Virginia, and many of his descendants now live in Kentucky.

I am still living at the same place you last saw me, but cannot expect, in the course of nature to remain much longer.  I am now in my 80th year.

May God bless you.

Rice Coffee

Sarah Bradford Coffey was a daughter of Bennett** and second wife Margaret White.  She is said to have been born in TN on July 22, 1770 and died on Sep. 3, 1840 in Bedford Co.  A sibling to Sarah was Henry Bradford, born Dec. 24, 1766, died May 10, 1871, married Rachel McFarland on Jan. 17, 1799.  Rachel was born Aug. 28, 1783 and died Aug. 26, 1852.  Their daughter Mary, born Mar. 22, 1809, died Oct. 20, 1893 in MO, was the wife of Asbury Madison Coffey***, thought by me to be the son of Eli and Hannah Allen Coffey.

Rice appears in very few North Carolina records meaning that he and Sarah moved to TN quite early in their marriage.  Their homeplace was near Wartrace, and he is on the 1788 and 1789 tax lists, and again from 1796 to 1799.  He has not been found in the 1790 or 1800 census.  This could indicated that he was gone during the period 1790-95, and that they moved permanently around 1800, or soon thereafter.

The first tax list in TN in which he appears in 1812 in Bedford Co.  A short account of the family written about 1890 by Rice Abner Coffey, a grandson, says that Rice moved from NC to Bedford Co. in 1808.  It also says that all of the children, except the last three were born in NC.  That would put the migration date a bit earlier.

He and Sally had 9 children.  Some discrepancy exists in various lists.  The 1820 census lists 5 male children and 3 female, which would be correct because Jerusha died in 1810.

Source‡ names children of Rice and Sarah as: Jurusha, d. age 16; Elvira; Henry B., m. Sarah Edmondson; Mary G., d. 1878, m. __ Kendall; Weightress (1801-1837), unmarried; Alexander Hamilton, d. 1864, m. Nancy Matherly; Martha (1805-1845), m. A. Yell; Benjamin B., (1809-1864), m. Mrs. Mary E. Beach; John R. (1815-1896), m. Mary A. Cross (Benjamin was Gen. in Mexican War). Marvin Coffee reports birth date for Sarah as Jul. 22, 1770 and death date as Sep. 3, 1840 in Bedford Co., TN.

Mary, a daughter of Rice and Sally, was born c1798 in NC and died Oct. 22, 1878 in TN, probably Bedford Co.  She is said to have married John Kendall on Mar. 4, 1821 in that county and to have divorced him before 1850.+

She and Kendall had at least one child, a daughter named Arcena, born c1825.  In 1850 when Mary appeared in the census with her widower father in Bedford Co., she was enumerated as Mary Kindle, age 42 with Hanna Kindle, age 25 and Nancy Bell Kindle, age 13.  Also in the household was a physician, Dr. William Pruett, age 24, born in TN.

We know that Arcena married a Prewitt but are unsure if William was her husband.  They are close in age and place and certainly had the opportunity.  Prewitt apparently died or otherwise disappeared sometime after 1859 and may have died in the Civil War, although I have not found a record of his service.  Mary and Arcena, along with Arcena's two chidlren, Nanny and Willis Prewitt, appear together in the 1860 and 1870 Bedford Co. census.  Arcena was found there in 1880 with her still unmarried children.

I would like to know who was Arcena's husband and, who was the 13-year old Nancy Bell Kindle in the 1850 census.

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*Sometimes referred to by Coffey researchers as "The Said Rice Letter."
**All information about Bennett comes from: Genealogical Publishing Co., Reprinter, Genealogies of Virginia Families: From Tyler's Quarterly Historical and Genealogical Magazine (Baltimore, MD: Genealogical Publishing Co., 2007)
***Read more about Asbury here and here.
‡Lost Links, Elizabeth Wheeler Francis, Southern Western Historical Quarterly, LXIX, 1945, pps. 98, 156, 157 and Descendants of James Bluford Coffey by Dr. Marvin Coffey
+Mary G. Kendle (Kendall) vs John Kendle for divorce. Mary G. Kendle and John Kendle were married in Bedford Co on 4 Mar 1821.  Source: Page 600, Chancery Court Records 1837-1845 by Marsh; call no: 976.858 M366ch

John Reid and Mary Ann Cross Coffey

John Reid Coffey was a son of Rice and Sarah Bradford Coffey. He was born March 27, 1814 in Wartrace, Bedford Co., TN, and died March 21, 1896 in (probably) Jackson Co., AL. His wife Mary Ann Cross was born Dec. 29, 1831, and died Sep. 6, 1887. They were married Aug. 21, 1849.

The Coffey Cousins' website contains at least two researcher submitted papers on John Reid and Mary Ann. Now, through the courtesy of Pamela Howell we have photographs of John and Mary.

The photographs can be viewed at: http://tinyurl.com/4lzld          [link no longer valid in 2014]

The photographs remain the property of Tammy Howell and should not be used in any other website, forum or service where a fee is charged to access them. Her permission should be asked for prior to using them on any other otherwise "free" website.

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Update July 25, 2014

Gen, John Reid Coffey

COFFEY, JOHN R, of Fackler, Jackson County, son of Rice and Sallie (Bradford) Coffey, was born at Wartrace, Bedford County, Tenn., March 27, 1814.

Rice Coffey* was born in Pennsylvania [sic] [Amherst Co., VA] in 1766. When a young man he removed to North Carolina and became a gunsmith. He married and again removed to Tennessee about 1801, and settled on a farm of a thousand acres of land which he bought of General Jackson, and on which his son, John R. Coffey, was born. He died in 1853, and his wife in 1840. He was a son of James Coffey, of early times, who raised a large family, all of the older sons of whom served as soldiers in the Revolutionary War. The Coffey family are Baptists.

John R. Coffey spent his early days on a farm attending the common old-field schools. When he was thirteen years of age he went to a high school at Shelbyville, Tenn., and remained there twelve months. After this, he came to Bellefonte without an acquaintance in the county or a dollar in his pocket, and became a clerk in a store. At the age of twenty-two, he established a mercantile business of his own in that village, and continued it until 1846. In 1840, he was elected Sheriff of Jackson County. At the breaking out of the Mexican War, he enlisted in the army in a company commanded by Capt. Richard W. Jones. He afterwards acted as lieutenant, lieutenant-colonel, and major-general in the militia; went to Mobile and organized the First Alabama Regiment and was elected its colonel, and as such, participated in the siege of Vera Cruz. After the war with Mexico, he became a general of the militia.  He had now returned to his farm and devoted his attention to its cultivation until 1853, when he moved to Stevenson and engaged in the mercantile business, which he prosecuted with considerable success until the beginning of the late war, when he again closed his store and returned to his farm of 4,000 acres, on the banks of the Tennessee River.

In 1861 he was elected a delegate to the convention which passed the ordinance of secession. He was bitterly opposed to that ordinance, but, being overpowered, he submitted with the best possible grace, and thereafter gave moral and substantial support to the Confederacy. (General Coffey's grandmother was a sister to Col. Ben, Cleveland, who commanded a regiment at the battle of King's Mountain.)

Mary Ann Cross Coffey

General Coffey was married January 21, 1849, to Miss Mary Ann Cross, daughter of Col. Chas. and  Eliza (Clark) Cross, of Jackson County. They were natives of North Carolina and came to Alabama about 1826. He was a soldier in the Indian wars, and was drowned in the Tennessee River about 1848. (His wife's great-grandfather, Col.Wm. Maclin, and her grandfather, Robert Clark, were in the Revolutiouary War; the latter was wounded in battle at Eutaw Springs, from which he died. Her grandfather, Maclin Cross, was in the battle at Nick-a-Jack, Indian Nation.)

General Coffey is the father of six children, of whom four grew to maturity, namely: Eliza, wife of Wm. J. Tally; Sallie B., wife of C. W. Brown, chief clerk in the office of the State Superintendent of Education; John B. and Clark Maclin. General Coffey's wife died September 6, 1887. He is a member of the Methodist Episcopal Church and the Masonic order. General Coffey is a man of commanding presence, being over six feet in height and having apparently the vim and energy of a youth. He is one of the best known men of the State and one of the most influential men in Northeastern Alabama.

[Both the General and Mary Ann are buried at the Cross Cemetery just a bit north of Scottsboro in Jackson Co., AL]

Source for this biography: Smith & De Land, Editors/Publishers, Northern Alabama: Historical and Biographical (N.p.: n.p., Alabama, 1888), Transcribed by Veneta McKinney at http://genealogytrails.com/ala/jackson/.  Other sources for information on the General and his family are:  TN, Davidson Co., Coffey Collection, file: "Biography of John R. Coffey," Coffey Family 324, Bio, John R. Coffey, 26 December 1894; Coffey Family History, Tennessee State Library and Archives, Nashville, TN and, Thomas McAdory Owen LL.D., Compiler, History of Alabama and Dictionary of Alabama Biography, 4 Volumes (Chicago, IL: The S. J. Clarke Publishing Co., 1921), Vol. III, Page 368.

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Shelbyville, Tenn*
November 15, 1844

Dear Jefferson:**

I received your letter of the 16th of September and have read it with entertaining interest. Indeed, it is always a source of gratification to me to hear that my friends are doing well.

You request some information respecting the history of our ancestors. I have no written biography of the Coffee family and therefore can only relate to you such facts as have come within my own recollection and such as have reached me by tradition.

I remember to have seen my paternal grandfather. His name was John Coffee, and he was raised in one of the lower counties of Virginia and died in Albemarle. My grandmother's maiden name was Jane Graves, and my father's name was James Coffee.  He also was raised in the lower part of Essex and from thence to Albemarle, where your father Ambrose Coffee was born in the year 1762. From this county my father (James) removed to Amherst and here his children grew up to manhood. My mother's maiden name was Elizabeth Cleveland. My maternal grandfathers's name was Alexander Cleveland. He was a descendant of the English and was an own cousin of Oliver Cromwell, a gentleman who figured conspicuously in the sixteenth century. He was raised in Virginia and born in the year 1663 and died in 1775, at the age of 112 years.

My father was born in 1729 and died in 1786. His children were nine sons and two daughters. My brothers'names were John, Archelaus, James, Reuben, Ambrose, Eli, Joel and Lewis Coffee. They are all dead save Eli and Lewis, the first of whom resides in Missouri and the other in Kentucky.

I became acquainted with your maternal grandfather Jesse Moore about the close of the revolutionary war. He then lived in Burke County, N.C., where you were born. He was born in Virginia, and many of his descendants now live in Kentucky.

I am still living at the same place you last saw me, but cannot expect, in the course of nature to remain much longer.  I am now in my 80th year.

May God bless you.

Rice Coffee


* From Tennessee Library and Archives:

**Jefferson was Thomas Jefferson Coffey, born 1805, Burke Co., NC, died 1858 in Brazoria Co., TX.  He was the son of Ambrose and Mildred Moore Coffey, both of whom died in Pulaski Co., KY in early 1800s.