| Home Surname List Name Index Sources Email Us | Fourth Generation58. Rice Coffey was born on 17 April 1766 in Amherst Co., VA. He appeared in the census in 1830 in Bedford Co., TN.160 He appeared in the census in 1840 in Bedford Co., TN.161 Rice appeared in the census on 9 November 1850 in Bedford Co., TN.162 Rice died on 24 July 1853 at the age of 87 in Bedford Co., TN and was buried at the Coffee Cemetery in Wartrace, Bedford Co., TN.163,164 Wartrace was an "old stomping ground" in Bedford County, and was the second largest town in Bedford County. The land on which the town was located had been owned by Rice Coffee and Henry B. Coffee, evidently brothers. Source: Tennessee Cousins, A History of the Tennessee People by Worth S. Ray, Jul., 1950. Pub. Gen. Pub. Co., 1960-1989 From Tennessee Library and Archives: Shelbyville, Tenn Dear Jefferson: I received your letter of the 16th of September and have read it with entertaining interest. Indeed, it is always a source of gratification to me to hear that my friends are doing well. You request some information respecting the history of our ancestors. I have no written biography of the Coffee family and therefore can only relate to you such facts as have come within my own recollection and such as have reached me by tradition. I remember to have seen my paternal grandfather. His name was John Coffee, and he was raised in one of the lower counties of Virginia and died in Albemarle. My grandmother's maiden name was Jane Graves, and my father's name was James Coffee. He also was raised in the lower part of Essex and from thence to Albemarle, where your father Ambrose Coffee was born in the year 1762. From this county my father (James) removed to Amherst and here his children grew up to manhood. My mother's maiden name was Elizabeth Cleveland. My maternal grandfathers's name was Alexander Cleveland. He was a descendant of the English and was an own cousin of Oliver Cromwell, a gentleman who figured conspicuously in the sixteenth century. He was raised in Virginia and born in the year 1663 and died in 1775, at the age of 112 years. My father was born in 1729 and died in 1786. His children were nine sons and two daughters. My brothers'names were John, Archelaus, James, Reuben, Ambrose, Eli, Joel and Lewis Coffee. They are all dead save Eli and Lewis, the first of whom resides in Missouri and the other in Kentucky. I became acquainted with your maternal grandfather Jesse Moore about the close of the revolutionary war. He then lived in Burke County, N.C., where you were born. He was born in Virginia, and many of his descendants now live in Kentucky. I am still living at the same place you last saw me, but cannot expect, in the course of nature to remain much longer. I am now in my 80th year. May God bless you. Rice Coffee Elizabeth Fields was born on 12 March 1755. Elizabeth died on 24 May 1824. Rice Coffey and Sarah "Sally" Bradford165,166,167,168 were married in 1790. Rice appears in very few North Carolina records meaning that he and Sarah moved to TN quite early in their marriage. Their home place was near Wartrace, and he is on the 1788 and 1789 tax lists, and again from 1796 to 1799. He has not been found in the 1790 or 1800 census. This could indicated that he was gone during the period 1790-95, and that they moved permanently around 1800, or soon thereafter. The first tax list in TN in which he appears in 1812 in Bedford Co. A short account of the family written about 1890 by Rice Abner Coffey, a grandson, says that Rice moved from NC to Bedford Co. in 1808. It also says that all of the children, except the last three were born in NC. That would put the migration date a bit earlier. He and Sally had 9 children. Some discrepancy exists in various lists. The 1820 census lists 5 male children and 3 female, which would be correct because Jerusha died in 1810. Sarah "Sally" Bradford, daughter of Joseph Bennett Bradford and Margaret Wilson, was born on 22 July 1770 in Wartrace, Bedford Co., TN. Sally died on 3 September 1840 at the age of 70 in Wartrace, Bedford Co., TN and was buried at Old Salem Cemetery in Bell Buckle, Bedford Co., TN.169,170 Rice Coffey and Sarah "Sally" Bradford had the following children:
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