Dr. Charles Coffin was the third president of the university (as East Tennessee College) from 1827 to 1832. Dr. Coffin was president of Greeneville College in 1826 when the trustees of East Tennessee College severed ties with Hampden-Sydney Academy. Coffin was a Massachusetts native and a Presbyterian minister with a DD from Williams College. He was also a Harvard graduate and held the MD degree. He came to Tennessee in 1800 to join the faculty of Greeneville College.
To entice him to relocate and head up East Tennessee College in its new campus home on “the Hill,” the trustees purchased the adjacent property and house from Charles McClung Jr. as the president’s residence and offered Coffin a salary of $1,500 per year.
Coffin married Susan Woodbridge Ayer (daughter of James and Mary [Woodbridge] Ayer) of New Milford, Maine, on April 19, 1802. Their eldest son (of 12 children, 10 of whom survived infancy) died on a visit to Columbia, Tennessee, in June 1855, and his body was returned to Knoxville on the first railroad train to enter the town.
