Alice Virginia Coffin was born on March 29, 1848, in Louisville, Kentucky. When she was one year old they moved to the family farm at Salem, Indiana, where her father, Matthew Starbuck Coffin had married her mother, Martha Thompson. Mrs. Coffin died when Alice was nine years old. Mr. Coffin moved the family to Mount Pleasant a few years later, so that the children might have a good education. Alice entered Iowa Wesleyan as a freshman in September of 1865. ... She received her B.S. degree in June of 1869 and an honorary M.S. degree in 1872. Alice became an elected and beloved teacher. She taught in Des Moines, Chariton and Newton, Iowa. A devoted, imaginative teacher, who was deeply conscious of the needs of her students, Alice was a teacher one remembers. One student wrote of her, "She was the kind of a teacher that the girls copy and the boys silently worship." She died July 28, 1888, in the home of her sister, Mary Frances Skiff. In accord with her request, she was buried in Union Cemetery at Newton, just as the sun was setting (FRIENDSHIP SEVEN: Of 7 - Oklahoma P.E.O. - 1974).
Alice Virginia Coffin was born on March 29, 1848, in Louisville, Kentucky. When she was one year old they moved to the family farm at Salem, Indiana, where her father, Matthew Starbuck Coffin had married her mother, Martha Thompson. Mrs. Coffin died when Alice was nine years old. Mr. Coffin moved the family to Mount Pleasant a few years later, so that the children might have a good education. Alice entered Iowa Wesleyan as a freshman in September of 1865. ... She received her B.S. degree in June of 1869 and an honorary M.S. degree in 1872. Alice became an elected and beloved teacher. She taught in Des Moines, Chariton and Newton, Iowa. A devoted, imaginative teacher, who was deeply conscious of the needs of her students, Alice was a teacher one remembers. One student wrote of her, "She was the kind of a teacher that the girls copy and the boys silently worship." She died July 28, 1888, in the home of her sister, Mary Frances Skiff. In accord with her request, she was buried in Union Cemetery at Newton, just as the sun was setting (FRIENDSHIP SEVEN: Of 7 - Oklahoma P.E.O. - 1974).