Daughter of Quak­er ship own­er George F. Cof­fin, Phoe­be was cou­sin to fem­in­ist Lu­cre­tia Mott. A gift­ed writ­er, she was pub­lished in the lo­cal pa­per by the time she was a teen­ag­er. She stu­died La­tin and math­e­ma­tics and taught school for a few years, then in 1849 mar­ried Dr. Joseph H. Han­a­ford. The cou­ple lived in New­ton and Read­ing, Mass­a­chu­setts, and had two child­ren. Phoebe con­tin­ued her lit­er­ary ef­forts, pro­duc­ing po­e­try, child­ren’s sto­ries, es­says, and bi­o­gra­phies (her bi­o­gra­phy of Ab­ra­ham Lin­coln sold 20,000 co­pies). She al­so ed­it­ed a Un­i­ver­sal­ist mag­a­zine, and, urged by Rev. Olym­pia Brown, she event­u­al­ly be­came a Uni­ver­sal­ist min­is­ter (the first woman or­dained in New Eng­land). She served church­es in Hing­ham and Walt­ham, Mass­a­chu­setts; New Ha­ven, Con­nec­ti­cut, and Jer­sey Ci­ty, New Jer­sey. Her works in­clude:

• Life of George Peabody
• Women of the Century

Sources

Lyrics

1. Cast Thy Bread upon the Wa­ters