Julian Ravenel Coffin (1846-1883)

He was studying in Germany during the U.S. Civil War and by the time he returned the family - who in 1850 were the largest cotton producers in Beaufort County - had lost everything. He went to New York where he married Alice Church but died just eight years later after contracting malaria, leaving his widow and two children (including the landscape architect Marian Cruger Coffin) with just $300. His widow then moved to Geneva, New York, where her family had been seated at Belvidere since 1804. She lived first with her sister, Harriet, and then with her brother, John.