Oct. 24, 1956
By Franklin P. Lincoln
Capt. John Brown Coyle will never rest in peace, it seems
Latest word from another branch of the family is that he really was born in Connecticut after all and not in Ireland.
A great-granddaughter in East Saugus, Mass., has a family Bible to prove it, she writes. Moreover, she has visited and has pictures of Great-Great-Grandfather Patrick Coyle's monument in the cemetery at Poquetanuck, Conn. It was he, and John Brown Coyle, who was a native of Ireland.
Her letter reads:
Daniel Webster said:
"It is wise for us to recur to the history of our ancestors. Those who do not look upon themselves as a link connecting the past with the future do not perform their duty to the world."
F. Babington Macaulay said:
"A people which takes no pride in the noble achievements of remote ancestry will never achieve anything worthy to be remembered with pride by remote descendants."
So this is Blanche Marie Coyle Newhall, daughter of the late George Norris Coyle and great-granddaughter of John Brown Coyle 1st, making the seas turbulent for you.
Your Party Line on the Coyles has been sent me and I find it very interesting. I have the family Bible of John Brown Coyle 1st and Sabrina Merrill Coyle and can give you correct facts which will set the record straight.
When Patrick Coyle was a young boy he ran away from home (Enniskillin, Ireland) and shipped on a sailing vessel bound for America. The ship croseed the Atlantic in safety but in a bad storm was wrecked off Montauk Point at the tip of Long Island, New York. Only the captain and Patrick were saved.
Learning from John Coyle 1st's youngest daughter Julia Ellen, that Patrick's family was buried in a private cemetery in Poquetanuck, Conn., adjacent to Preston, Conn., where her father was born, my cousin Capt. Henry Coyle, USCG, began the quest. It was in September, 1927, and the late Capt. Coyle was stationed at Fort Trumbull, Conn. With difficulties his search was rewarded.
I have been to the cemetery with Cousin Henry and have photographs of the monument with the inscriptions which are on three sides. I would say that it is nearly a duplicate of the marble monument in Evergreen Cemetery in Portland.
This will prove that the Maine Historical Society's Records of the Coyle family which you used in your painstaking research are correct and it is a great pleasure to write you this information.
The inscription on the Coyle Monument in Poquetanuck, Conn., reads:
This Monument is Erected by
John B. Coyle
In Memory of his Father
PATRICK COYLE
Who Died Dec. 9, 1811.
Aged 45 years
All that is mortal of them rests here.
Earth Separates, Heaven Unites.
MRS. NEWHALL'S family bible shows Patrick Coyle to have been born in Enniskillin in 1766. On Dec. 6, 1790, he married Hannah Brown in Preston, Connecticut.
They had five daughters and three sons in 17 years. Capt. John Brown Coyle, their last boy and next to last child, was born in Preston in 1805.
On April 18, 1830, John Brown Coyle married Sabrina Merrill. She was a native of Albany, N.Y., one of 11 children of parents who originally were Hartford, Conn. people.
Mrs. Newhall's Bible also reveals that John Brown and Sabrina Merrill Coyle had eight children instead of five. One of them, Anne, born in 1833, died when 3 1/2. A son, John, born in 1839 lived only 14 days.
Their next child also was a boy and he was named John Brown Coyle, Jr. It was he who succeeded his father as head of the local steamship lines upon the latter's death in 1884.
Mrs. Newhall traces her lineage back to Great-Grandfather John Brown Coyle through his eldest son, George H. Coyle. He was the marine engineer and boilermaker who resided on Newbury street here.
His oldest son was George Norris Coyle, Eastern Steamship Lines engineer. Mrs. Newhall is his daughter, Blanche Marie. She was born and educated in Portland.
Her husband, Fred C. Newhall, is a jeweler. They live in an antique-filled home at East Saugus. They have no children.
Her step-mother, whom George Norris Coyle married after his first wife died, is Mrs. Anna Dirwanger Coyle of Washburn Ave. Seventyish Mrs. Newhall had a birthday last month.
"Instead of my giving her a present," Mrs. Coyle recounts," Blanch and her husband gave me one. They drove to Portland and took me out to the Cascades to dinner."