Harold Jefferson Coolidge, Sr.

Harold Jefferson Coolidge (January 22, 1870 – July 31, 1934) was an American lawyer. He was the brother of Archibald Cary Coolidge and father of Harold Jefferson Coolidge Jr.

His father was a great-grandson of the 3rd United States President Thomas Jefferson, through his maternal grandparents, Thomas Mann Randolph Jr. and Martha Jefferson Randolph. His paternal uncle was Thomas Jefferson Coolidge, the Boston businessman and U.S. Minister to France. Harold's great-uncles were Thomas Jefferson Randolph, George Wythe Randolph, and his grandfather, Joseph Coolidge, was a distant relative of President Calvin Coolidge.

Through his mother, Harold was the nephew of John Lowell Gardner II. His mother and uncle John were the grandchildren of merchant Joseph Peabody, one of the wealthiest men in the United States at the time of his death in 1844.

Coolidge attended school in Boston before studying in Germany

Personal life On February 19, 1903, Coolidge was married to Edith Lawrence (1879–1975), the daughter of Amory Appleton Lawrence and granddaughter of abolitionist Amos Adams Lawrence. Her uncle was Bishop William Lawrence and her aunt was Harriet Lawrence Hemenway, founder of the Massachusetts Audubon Society. Her first cousins included Bishops William Appleton Lawrence, and Frederic Cunningham Lawrence. Together, they were the parents of two sons and a daughter:

Harold Jefferson Coolidge Jr. (1904–1985), a prominent zoologist. Lawrence Coolidge (1905–1950), who married Victoria Stuart Tytus (1909–1996), the daughter of Robb de Peyster Tytus, in 1934. Emily Fairfax Stone (1907 -1991), who married Harry Adsit Woodruf and later Thomas Archibald Stone

Harold Jefferson Coolidge Sr. died on July 31, 1934, and is buried at the Mount Auburn Cemetery in Cambridge, Massachusetts. After his death, his widow remarried U.S. General and Chief of the Military Intelligence Division Sherman Miles (1882–1966) in 1954.

Publications Archibald Cary Coolidge, Life and Letters, 1932 Thoughts on Thomas Jefferson, or, What Jefferson was not, 1936 (posthumous, edited by Lawrence Coolidge).