Nathaniel, like his father, appears to have combined a variety of activities to support his family. On many documents, Nathaniel is listed as a merchant-tailor. Family account books indicate that he also started the tanning business that would sustain the family into the 1800s.
These same family and business accounts show that he enslaved man named Jack. Several generations of the Coffin family were involved in slavery and enslaved people lived and worked at Coffin House in the eighteenth century. Jack’s work included working in the tannery or on the farm, as well as tasks listed in the account books such as carting rocks, wood, and dung. There is also evidence that enslaved people in Newbury worked haying and threshing fields and on the salt marshes to harvest and stack the salt marsh hay which was very valuable for feeding cattle. Nathaniel also benefited from economic institution of slavery in his community, often accepting labor as payment or trading Jack’s time for commodities. The account book shows that he held debts for people in the community that he sold goods to, and for services rendered. A few years later, Nathaniel recorded the gifting of Jack to his son Edmund Coffin.
In 1725, Nathaniel’s son Joseph married Margaret Morse and brought her to Coffin House to set up a new household. When Joseph and Margaret moved in, Joseph’s parents and three of his siblings were still living there. Margaret and Joseph had eight children. Joseph, like the generations before him, engaged in a variety of activities to sustain the family. They continued in the tanning business, but also maintained tillage land, orchards, pasture, and livestock. Joseph Coffin himself purchased and enslaved a young woman named Lucy and gifted her to two of his daughters in 1771. He gave each daughter, Sarah Little and Susannah Boyd, half of Lucy’s labor and each “part” was valued at £45.
Both Nathaniel and Joseph were active in the local community. They held the office of Newbury town clerk consecutively from 1711 to 1773. The town’s population continued to grow. The first census, taken in 1765, indicates that the town’s population had reached 2,960. The town was an important agricultural community, but manufacturing enterprises were growing.
In 1755 Joseph’s son Joshua married Sarah Bartlett and brought his bride back to the house where his parents continued to live. Joshua and Sarah had twelve children (eight survived to adulthood). Joshua and Sarah also took in apprentices. Historic New England has a copy of the 1772 indenture between a Daniel Mitchell of Wells, Maine, and the Coffins. The agreement is that the Coffins will teach Daniel “the art, trade, and mastery of a tanner…during the term of 5 years, seven months, and 75 days..and also to learn him to read and write legibly…and at expiration of term give him 2 good suits of apparel for all parts of his body, one for the Lord’s day, the other for working days.”
In 1785 the house, which had consistently had three generations living as one family, was legally divided. Edmund Coffin, one of Joshua’s two sons, reached twenty-one and wanted his share of his deceased father’s estate. Consequently, a division was made first between the two sons and their widowed mother Sarah, and after her death in 1798, between the two sons. Each had exclusive use of certain rooms, stairways, and cellars with right of passage through some of the other rooms. The “families” lived separately under one roof, using different kitchens and entertaining rooms. The house remained divided this way through the last generation of Coffins to occupy the house.