Charles Emmet Coffin has been one of the prominent figures of Indianapolis commercial and civic affairs for over forty years. Mr. Coffin is a native of Indiana, born at Salem July 13, 1856, son of Zachariah T. and Caroline (Armfield) Coffin.

He represents the seventh generation of descent from Tristram Coffin, of Nantucket, Massachusetts, one of the early pioneers of New England.

As a youth Mr. Coffin was impressed with a sense of responsibility toward others. He attended a grammar school at Salem, his birthplace, completed his high school course at Bloomington, and spent one year in Indiana University.

He had to give up his university career to go to work, turning over his wages to his parents. At the age of twenty he began his career in Indianapolis, as an employee of Wylie & Martin, real estate. Six years later he engaged in business for himself.

His study and experience made him an expert in realty values. He was the medium for handling many important real estate operations in Indianapolis, and besides his brokerage business he developed and marketed several subdivisions in and around Indianapolis. His services have also gone to the broader financing of real estate ownership. He was one of the organizers of the Indiana Savings & Investment Company, incorporated in 1889, and for over forty years has been president of that institution, one of the largest of its kind in Indiana, with assets of over three million dollars. Practically all the funds of the company have been held for first loans on Indianapolis real estate.

Mr. Coffin also organized, in 1900, the Central Trust Company, which was sold to the Farmers Trust Company in 1913, and since that date he has been a member of the board of directors of the latter company.

He was vice president of the Indianapolis & Eastern Traction Company from its organization in 1903 until the property was sold in 1905. Mr. Coffin in 1913 became secretary and treasurer of the Star Publishing Company, and in the same year was elected a member of its board of directors.

His part in organizations representing the larger commercial and civic interests of the city has been not less noteworthy. From 1899 to 1922 he served as a member of the board of park commissioners of Indianapolis, and for ten years of that time was president of the board. He was for four years, until 1926, president of the board of public works. Mr. Coffin was one of the organizers and incorporators of the Indianapolis Commercial Club in 1890, a club that for the first time gave an organization broadly representative of the progressive interests of the community, and under which were inaugurated a series of improvements and reforms that laid the foundation of the modern and greater city.

He was chosen president of the club in 1900. He was also on the board of governors of the Indianapolis Board of Trade, has been a director of the Indianapolis Art Association, is a member of the Columbia Club and Woodstock Club of Indianapolis, and president of the board of trustees of the Meridian Street Methodist Episcopal Church, also a member of the board of trustees of the Indiana State Normal School, Terre Haute. Mr. Coffin is a member of the Society of Colonial Wars, the Indiana Historical Society, is a thirty-second degree Scottish Rite Mason and a member of Murat Temple of the Mystic Shrine.

With all his important responsibilities in business and civic affairs Mr. Coffin is known to many thousands outside the state as an authority on whist. In 1895 he published a book, The Gist of Whist, this being followed in 1907 by The Gist of Auction Bridge. Mr. Coffin is a former president of the American Whist League.

He married at Indianapolis, September 20, 1897, Miss Mary H. Birch, daughter of Richard E. Birch. Her father was a steamboat captain on the Mississippi River. They have three children: Clarence E:, who married Lenora Smith; Jean Fletcher, wife of Commander J. H. Ingram, of the United States Navy; and Carolyn, wife of Charles Harvey Bradley.