This finding aid is made available for public use following the Universal 1.0 Public Domain Dedication Creative Commons designation.
This collection is open for research.
The following boxes are located offsite: Box 1. Please note that requests for use of boxes held in offsite storage must be made three business days in advance.
Gift of Professor William Adams Brown, D.D., Coe's great nephew, on March 7, 1935.
John Rogers Coe was a Presbyterian missionary and pastor. John Rogers Coe was born on January 17, 1800 to Jonas Coe (1759-1782) and Elizabeth Hunting Miller (1788-1805) at Troy, New York. Jonas served as pastor of Troy's First Presbyterian Church for three decades. John was his parents' second child to survive infancy, coming after Edward Morris (1796-1828) and before Eliza Maria (1803-1890). After receiving his A.B. at Union College in 1816, John Rogers Coe went on to earn his S.T.B. at the Princeton Theological Seminary in 1820. He was licensed as a preacher by the Presbytery of Troy that same year. Following his service as a missionary, Coe was appointed pastor in Whitehall, New York in July 1822. He died, unmarried, on September 30, 1823. In his 1858 text, Annals of the American Pulpit, the clergyman and biographer William B. Sprague wrote that Coe "inherited many of his father's excellent qualities, and many fond hopes were blasted by his early death."
Union Theological Seminary Archives: UTS 1, papers of faculty and students
Item description, UTS1: John Rogers Coe Papers, 1819-1823, box #, folder #, The Burke Library at Union Theological Seminary, Columbia University in the City of New York.
Material was cataloged by Lynn A. Grove on 1988-07-07. Items that were tied into bundles were separated and filed according to number or date. All materials were placed in new acid-free folders and boxes. The finding aid was created by Alex W. Black and Brigette C. Kamsler in 2015 with the support of the Henry Luce Foundation, and edited by Leah Edelman in 2020.
UTS1: Jonas Coe papers, 1786-1822, The Burke Library at Union Theological Seminary, Columbia University in the City of New York.
Coe-Brown Family Papers, The New-York Historical Society.
This collection contains sermons and other writings of John Rogers Coe, including over 50 handwritten sermons that Coe delivered over the course of his short career. In addition to regular sermons, at least two were composed for a special occasion: one for a child's funeral, another for a Christmas service. The sermons include extensive revisions, such as new readings written in between lines, in the margins, or on strips of paper that have been sewn into place. Nine of the pamphlets contain small sheets of paper that outline the text of the sermon itself. Other writings include a small notebook of copied Biblical texts with added commentary ("Text Book") and a 74 page essay titled Critica Sacra, structured as a series of questions and answers on the subject of textual criticism of the Bible, which it defines as "all that learning which is employed in attempting to ascertain the genuine text of the O[ld]. and N[ew]. Testaments."
Some material in this collection may be protected by copyright and other rights. Information concerning copyright, fair use, and reproduction requests can be consulted at Columbia's Copyright Advisory Office.
This collection is arranged numerically, chronologically, and by format.
Numbered sermons 4, 6, and 8 are not included.
Numbered sermons 39, 42-43, and 45-46 are not included.
This file contains sermons dated Aug. 20 1820; Dec. 6 1821; Aug., Aug. 22, Aug. 23, Sep. 8, Oct. 6, Nov. 17, Nov. 24, Dec. 8, Dec. 15, Dec. 22, and Dec. 25 1822; and Jan. 5, Jan. 19, Mar. 9, Mar. 16, Mar. 30, May 25, Jun. 8, Jun. 22, Jul. 6, and Jul. 13 1823; as well as six undated sermons, and a small notebook of copied Biblical texts with added commentary ("Text Book").