San
Joaquin County
Biographies
CLEMUEL WALTER COFFMAN
A worthy representative of Handy
County, Virginia, who became a well-known pioneer of the Prairie state, is C.
W. Coffman, who was born in Henderson County, Illinois, on September 24, 1863, and
there was reared and educated in one of the common schools. His father was Jesse Walter Coffman, who
married Miss Margaret Switzer. Four
children were granted the sturdy couple.
Isaac, William Henry and John are deceased; and there is only left the subject
of this story.
Mrs. Coffman died when the lad was
eleven years of age, and his father married a second time. He had three ranches, one of 122 acres, and
two of eighty acres each; and C. W. remained at home with his father until he
was twenty-five years of age. In the
county where he was born, he married on March 8, 1896, Miss Atlanta Jane Hazen,
the daughter of Joseph and Emeline Hazen, and a member of a family of
experienced farmer folks. She was born
in Nemaha County, Kansas, and her father was a native of Ohio, who moved to
Kansas and took up Government land when she was one and one-half years
old. Then after awhile they removed to
Henderson County, Illinois, and there Mrs. Coffman was reared and educated in
the public schools. They have had nine
children in the Hazen family, but only three are living today, and these are
Henry, Mrs. Atlanta Coffman, and Verna, Mrs. Biasi.
Mr. and Mrs. Coffman followed
farming in the vicinity of the old home place until some seven years after
their marriage, and then they moved to Coffee County, Kansas, where they bought
a farm and ranched until they came to California in 1912. They were fortunate in settling at once in
San Joaquin County, where Mr. Coffman first purchased a vineyard of twenty
acres, which he sold in 1918, when he bought the present ranch of ten acres on
the Cherokee Lane Road, about two miles southeast of Acampo, and one mile south
of the Houston School. The Coffman’s
have been here on this ranch since 1918, and they devote it partly to vineyard
and partly to orchard purposes. They
have four children.
A staunch Democrat, Mr. Coffman is nevertheless
a broad-minded “booster” of the best things locally, regardless of
partisanship. When he was a resident of
Kansas, he was a school trustee, and he has always been interested in public
education. He was long an Odd Fellow,
and attended the lodges, until deafness prevented him from enjoying the
occasions, when to the regret of many, he withdrew. Mrs. Coffman and the daughter, Iva, are
members of the Rebekahs.
Transcribed by V. Gerald Iaquinta.
Source: Tinkham, George
H., History of San Joaquin County, California , Pages
1484-1485. Los Angeles, Calif.: Historic
Record Co., 1923.
© 2012 V. Gerald Iaquinta.
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