Henry Coffin Nevins

Henry Coffin Nevins (January 10, 1843 – June 25, 1892) was an industrialist from an established New England family in the city of Methuen, Massachusetts.

Life Nevins was the son of David (born in Salem, New Hampshire on December 12, 1809 to John Nevins and Achsah, Swan) and Eliza Nevins ( Elizabeth Coffin; daughter of a wealthy merchant from the island of Nantucket, Jared Coffin). and "one of the worst industrial calamities in American history".

Henry and his elder brother, David, took on ever-increasing responsibilities as their father aged, including managing the City Exchange Banking Company, a Boston-based bank that was eventually merged with the Nevins' other businesses. The "Methuen Duck Cloth" the Nevinses manufactured was world-renowned as a material for sail cloth and tents for the tropics.

After David Sr.'s death in 1881, the family's wealth was such that his widow Eliza, his eldest son David C, Nevins, and his younger son Henry Coffin Nevins were able to erect the Nevins Memorial Library in his honor. David Sr. and Eliza are buried on the library grounds beneath a memorial "Angel of Life" sculptured by George Moretti in 1896.

Legacy

Henry Coffin Nevins married Julia Du Gay of Paris but they had no children. He was buried at Mount Auburn Cemetery beneath a limestone monument of cherubs and palm fronds designed by Augustus St. Gaudens. At the cost of over fifty thousand dollars, his wife dedicated to her husband, in the nave of the local Congregationalist Church, "The Resurrection", a stained glass window designed by John LaFarge and "said to be (one of) his masterpieces."

He was remembered posthumously in a recollection of: "... a beautiful summer day in 1889 ... The marshal of the procession on that occasion was the late Henry C. Nevins, whose untimely death a few years later was deeply mourned by the entire community. He was superbly mounted, sat his horse finely, and was directly in front of the orator of the day, listening to every word with that attentive urbanity so characteristic of him."

With few close relatives, his widow became a philanthropist, like her sister-in-law Harriet Nevins. She left New England and lived an international life, establishing homes in Paris, at the Hotel Savoy in New York City, and Washington, D.C., where she died.

Upon her death, "Mrs. Julie F.H. Nevins" willed funds for the construction of the Henry C. Nevins Home for Aged and Incurables, an old age home established in 1906. Julia was living in New York City at the time of her death and The New York Times ran a story about her $1 million gift. The rest of her estate amounted to around $1.2 million and was inherited by her sister, Antoinette Lees (wife of Capt. George Cholmondeley of the Grenadier Guards) in London, to her "faithful maid" Margaret Young, Werner von Blomberg's wife Eva, and others.