Coffin-Wiess papers

Coffin - Wiess papers	back to the WIESS family home page
photographed by Tom Cloud Sep. 6, 2002, Beaumont, Texas
Simon and Margaret (Sturrock) Wiess moved to Texas in 1835 and their family played a major role in both the Texian Revolution and in the development of East Texas and its lumber, oil and banking industries. Though Arthur Stillwell has been credited with the inception and development of the city of Port Arthur and the "Golden Triangle", there is no doubt that the Wiess brothers played a long-forgotten but major role in it. The city was built on land co-owned by Simon Wiess in partnership with others and it is true that William Wiess planned many projects, including the ship channel, that predated Stillwell's involvement. Perhaps William Wiess' preoccupation with his many other projects allowed Arthur Stillwell to capitalize on his efforts.
These documents were recovered by a neighbor from the home of Arthur Coffin, who died in 1978. The old Coffin place is currently owned by a Wiess cousin, but a tree has fallen on his old house and it is in very poor condition. (If you have photos of the Coffin or Wiess homesteads you are willing to share, please contact me so that they can be posted here for all to enjoy.) Special thanks to Norman West for preserving these documents and for letting me copy them and thanks to my cousin Margaret and her husband, David Stacey, for offering my mother and I their home and their hospitality while we made these copies.

The preview images are 21-66k jpegs. The full-size images are 170-370k jpegs.

The photographs are in no particular order. In fact, I realized that roll #1 below was actually taken after roll #4 after setting up this page, so the actual order in which the photos were taken is not preserved -- I am only certain that roll #5 was the last one taken. (It might be better to have the photos arranged in chronological order or perhaps grouped by subject or sender/recipient .... suggestions welcomed.)

These are CD images from Wal-Mart. They start the image numbering with "4" rather than "1" and, for some reason, all the images have a severe reddish cast and are fuzzy. The actual prints are very clear and natural color (hmmm, a professional photographer friend of mine just told me the scans are true colors and the prints look good because their processors adjusted the colors for me -- it's my fault, he says, because I used tungsten lights in my copy stand with regular color film). It is my intention to scan the prints or negatives to get higher resolution digital images and to replace the current images on this web page -- no promise on a date for that. I want to make prints available to all the cousins that want them, but I have to figure out how to accomplish that with a reasonable expenditure of time and other resources -- again, suggestions welcomed.

    For a "photo-album" type presentation, click on the "roll" number at the top of each column.
    At this time, the only description of the documents is in this listing and each document can be seen by clicking the "preview" or "full-size" link following its description.
    It is intended to provide transcriptions of all documents -- hopefully soon. If you want to volunteer to help with one or more, please let me know so that we don't duplicate our efforts.

A.F. Bradley (?) Dec. 16, 1860 bill for $386.70
(this is 2nd part of roll 4, #25)

receipt from Abel Coffin by J.M. Maxey, etc (? 1864)

letter to Pauline Wiess Coffin, June 10, 1924 on Kirby Lumber Company letterhead from Ray Wiess about daughter Edwina's spelling contest.

bulletin of the First Methodist Church,
Beaumont, Texas, Feb. 11, 1912, p. 1

envelope to Arthur W. Coffin c/o Capt. Wiess, 1863