In 1884, Henry Asa Coffeen left Illinois and moved his young family West, to the Wyoming Territory. They settled in Big Horn and opened a store. But when Coffeen realized that the soon to be built railroad was going through Sheridan rather than Big Horn, the family moved again. In Sheridan, Coffeen bought up parcels of land, opened a store and soon established himself as a prominent businessman.
In 1889 he helped draft the Wyoming constitution. He lobbied to give women the right to vote, saying “I am unwilling to stand here and disenfranchise one-half of the people of our territory, and of that, the better half.”
In 1892 he was elected to represent Wyoming in Congress, where he served a 2-year term. After losing his bid for re-election, he returned to Sheridan, where he wrote to Andrew Carnegie requesting funds to build a town library. Coffeen donated more than one thousand books to establish the Sheridan public library.
Learn more in the Coffeen Family papers at UW’s American Heritage Center.