Levi Coffin was born in New Garden, North Carolina, in 1798. In 1821, Coffin and his cousin Vestal conducted a Sunday school for Blacks. Local enslavers soon forced them to stop. Coffin joined members of his family in Indiana in 1824. He started a store in Newport and soon expanded his business to include manufacturing and butchering. Coffin assisted many African Americans in their escape from slavery. Coffin then moved to Cincinnati, where in 1847 he opened a wholesale warehouse that handled cotton goods, sugar and spices produced by free labor. During and after the Civil War, Coffin worked for the Western Freedmen's Aid Society. He died in September 1877 and is buried in Cincinnati.

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• A Life of Action

Updated 05/01/2007

Michigan Historical Center, Department of History, Arts and Libraries
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