Page:The Biographical Dictionary of America, vol. 02.djvu/329

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COIT


COLBURN


COIT, Thomas Winthrop, educator, was born in New London, Conn., June 28, 1803; son of Dr. Thomas and Mary Wanton (Saltonstall), grand- son of Dr. Thomas and Mary (Gardiner), great grandson of Thomas and Mary (Prentice), great^ grandson of John and Mehetable (Chandler), great^ grandson of Deacon Jo.seph and Martha (Harris), and great^ grandson of John and Mary (Jenners) Coit. He was graduated at Yale in 1821, studied theology and became a Protestant Episcopal clergyman. He was rector of St. Peter's church, Salem, Mass., 1827-29; of Christ church, Cambridge. 1829-34, president and pro- fessor of moral philosophy, Transylvania uni- Tersity, 1834-37 ; rector of Trinity church, New Rochelle, N.Y., 1837-48, and of St. Paul's church, Troy, N.Y., 1848-72. He was professor of eccle- siastical history in Trinity college, Hartford, Conn., 1849-62, and in the Berkeley divinity school, Middletown, Conn., 1854-85. Yale con- ferred upon him the degree of A.M. in 1831 ; Co- lumbia that of S.T.D. in 1834; and Trinity that of LL.D. in 1853. He gave his Library to the Berke- ley divinity school. He published liemarks on Norton's Statement of Reasons (1832) ; Paragraph Bible (1834) ; Townsend's Bible, Chronologically Ar- ranged, icith Xotes (2 vols. 1837-38) ; Puritanism, or a Churchma>i's Defence against its Aspersio)is, by an Appeal to Its Oicn History (1844) ; Early Christianity (1859) ; and Puritanism in Xeic England and the Episcopal Church (a monograph in Bishop Perry's Histoi'y of the American Episcopal Church, 1885). He died in Middletown, Conn., June 21, 1885.

COKE, Richard, senator, was born at "Williams- burgh, Va., March 13, 1829; son of John and Eliza (Haukins) Coke ; grandson of John and Rebecca (Shields) Coke ; and a descendant of John and Sarah (Hoge) Coke, who immigrated to Virginia

from England in 1724. He was grad- uated at William and Mary college in 1849 with honors, was ad- mitted to the bar in 1850, and removed to Waco, Tex., where he became promi- nent in his profes- sion. At the out- break of the civil war, he enlisted in the Confederate

y^ army as a private

the war was mus- tered out as a captain. In 1865 he was appointed judge of the 19th judicial district of Texas and in 1866 was elected as a Democrat to the supreme bench of the state. In 1867 he was removed by


military order of General Sheridan as "an imped- iment to reconstruction. ■■ In 1S73 he was elected governor of Texas by a majority of 50,000 and was re-elected in 1876 by a majority of 102,000. On Dec. 1, 1876, he resigned the governorship to take his seat in the U.S. senate to which he had been elected as successor to Morgan C. Hamilton, Republican, and he was re-elected in 1882 and again in 1888, the last two elections being the unanimous vote of both parties in the legislature. He declined re-election in 1894 and was succeeded b}' Horace Chilton. In the senate he served on the committees on commerce, judiciary. Rev- olutionary claims, and as chairman of the com- mittee on fisheries. He was married in 1852 to Mary Elizabeth, daughter of Dr. James L. and Amanda (Evans) Home. He died in Waco, Tex., May 14, 1897.

COLBURN, Jeremiah, antiquary, was born in Boston, Mass., Jan. 12, 1815; son of Calvin and Caroline Sibyl (Lakin) Colburn, and grandson of Nathan Colburn, a soldier in the Revolutionary war. He was engaged in mercantile business, as clerk and proprietor, 1830-52, and was ap- praiser in the Boston custom house, 1852-60. after- ward devoting himself to literature incident to his various collections of coins, medals, auto- graphs, paper tokens, books, portraits and en- gravings which were very valuable. He was married in 1846 to Eliza Ann, daughter of John Blackman of Dorchester. He was elected a mem- ber of the New England historic genealogical society in 1857; was a founder of the Prince society in 1858, of the Boston numismatic society in 1860 of which he was president 1865-91, and of the Boston antiquarian club in 1879, changed in 1881 to the Bostonian society. He supervised the publication of W^ood's "New England Prospect " ; edited the American Journal of Xumismatics (1870-91) ; and compiled a Bibliography of the Local Histoi'y (f Massachusetts. He died in Boston, Mass., Dec. 30, 1891.

COLBURN, Warren, mathematician, was born in Dedhani, Mass., March 1, 1793. He was a ma- chinist by trade but was deeply interested in mathematics and made his own way to college, being graduated at Harvard in 1820. He taught school, 1820-23, and was afterward sui^erintend- ent of a manufacturing company in Lowell. He delivered many pojjular lectures illustrated with the magic lantern; was superintendent of the public schools of Lowell, and for many years an examiner in mathematics at Harvard. In 1827 he was elected a fellow of the American academy of arts and sciences. He published First Lessons in Intellectual Arithmetic (1821), which was widely used in the schools in America and the old world, being translated into the European and eastern tongues. He published a Sequel to his arithme-