Henry A. Coffeen

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Henry Asa Coffeen (February 14, 1841 – December 9, 1912) was an American politician who served as Wyoming’s U.S. Representative (at-large) as a Democrat from 1893 to 1895. He was born in Gallipolis, Ohio, to Alvah P. Coffeen and Olive Elizabeth Martin. His family later moved to Indiana and Illinois. He studied at local schools and earned a degree from the scientific department of Abingdon College. He worked as a teacher and even taught at Hiram College in Ohio before moving to the Wyoming Territory, settling in Sheridan in 1884. He helped organize Wyoming’s first agricultural fair in 1885 and served as a Democratic delegate to Wyoming’s constitutional convention in 1889, which drafted the state’s constitution for statehood. He also represented Wyoming at the World’s Fair Congress of Bankers and Financiers in Chicago in 1893. In the 1892 election he narrowly defeated Clarence D. Clark to win a seat in the U.S. House, but he lost to Frank Wheeler Mondell in 1894.

Coffeen married Harriet King; she died in 1901. He later married Alice Dwight in 1904. Coffeen died in Sheridan, Wyoming, in 1912 and was buried in Sheridan Municipal Cemetery.