Isaac Coffin
entrepreneur · active 1869
Built the first beach-front cottage to take paying guests in 1869, launching what would become The Ladies' Resort to the Ocean—the birth of Ocean City as a resort destination.
In the record (9)
c. 1869
Isaac Coffin is said to have opened the Rhode Island Inn on the beach — the first cottage on the future Ocean City strand to take paying guests.
By the received account, Isaac Coffin built a beachfront lodge around 1869 near what is now South 1st Street and the Boardwalk, catering to hunters and fishermen on the otherwise empty barrier island. Variously called the Rhode Island Inn and later the Ocean House, it was sold in 1880 to Philadelphian William Selby, who renamed it Congress Hall and expanded it to some 110 rooms. No contemporary 1869-1875 advertisement or notice for the inn has been located; the founding date rests entirely on later retellings and is recorded here unverified.
Ocean City's first hotel, if the story holds, predated Ocean City by six years.
Unverified — sourced but not confirmed against a primary record.
Source · checked 2026-08-06
1870
Isaac Coffin's twelve-year-old son is killed by the accidental discharge of his own gun on Synepuxent Beach — the first named death recorded on the future Ocean City sand.
The Cecil Whig's Worcester County column for June 4, 1870 carried the item whole: "Young Coffin, aged 12 years, son of Isaac Coffin, on Synepuxent Beach, opposite Berlin, was killed on Saturday, 31st ult., by the accidental discharge of his gun." The paragraph is small history doing heavy lifting. Isaac Coffin is the man credited with putting the first paying-guest cottage on that beach around 1869; secondary accounts of his Rhode Island Inn are all retrospective, and this notice is contemporary, dated evidence that the Coffin household was actually living on the barrier strand in 1870 — five years before anyone called it Ocean City. The boy is not named in the notice. The printed date is internally inconsistent: 31 May 1870 fell on a Tuesday, so the death was either Saturday 28 May or the paper's "31st ult." is a typesetting slip.
The earliest human story we can date on that beach is a hunting accident, not a hotel.
Source · checked 2026-08-06
c. 1871
The only guest lodging on the strand around 1871 is Isaac Coffin's Rhode Island Inn, reached by stagecoach and ferry.
According to the received account, Isaac Coffin built the first beachfront cottage to take paying guests — the Rhode Island Inn — in 1869, drawing visitors who came for the beach, the fishing, and the shells, arriving by stagecoach and ferry across Sinepuxent Bay. In 1871 it and a scattering of simple boarding structures were all that stood where Ocean City would rise; the resort era proper had to wait for the Atlantic Hotel (1875) and the railroad bridge (1876). — 1871 RECTIFICATION, 2026-08-11 [downgraded]: No new evidence either way, and the campaign has now searched hard enough for the absence to mean something. A full 1871 sweep of Chronicling America turned up NOT ONE mention of Coffin, of the Rhode Island Inn, or of any lodging on the Sinepuxent strand — while the same sweep found Berlin men talking about building a hotel on that beach (new fact:1871-berlin-talks-of-a-hotel-on-the-beach, Smyrna Times, July 26, 1871). If a paying-guest house had been running on the beach since 1869, a July 1871 item saying Berlin "talks of building a hotel on the beach" reads oddly. That is suggestive, not probative, and it is recorded as such: the fact should keep confidence "conflicting" and its existing location and year conflicts, and its detail's assertion that in 1871 the inn "and a scattering of simple boarding structures were all that stood" should be softened, because no 1871 source in this campaign places anything at all on that beach. Recommend adding the hotel-talk fact to relatedFactRefs and noting the negative in provenance.
built c. 1869 — the traditional date; one source says 1859 and small structures may date to 1839
Source · checked 2026-08-05
1872
Robert Fowler, ex-Treasurer of Maryland, is about to build a hotel on Coffin's Beach — the future Ocean City site, three years before the Atlantic.
A one-line peninsula item carried by at least two papers in late October 1872 — the Wilmington Daily Gazette of October 22 and the Baltimore County Union of October 26 — reports a project "to erect a hotel opposite Berlin, Worcester county, on Coffin's Beach." The barrier strand opposite Berlin is the future Ocean City, and "Coffin's Beach" is the name it went by from Isaac Coffin's cottage/inn, the only guest lodging then on the sand. The promoters' names sit in an adjacent column that the newspaper OCR does not recover, and nothing indicates the hotel was built: the Atlantic Hotel Company did not incorporate and name the town until 1875. THE PROMOTER IS NAMED, AND THERE IS ONLY ONE: "Robert Fowler, Esq., Ex-State Treasurer, of Maryland, is about to erect a hotel opposite Berlin, Worcester Co., on Coffin's Beach" (Wilmington Daily Gazette, 22 Oct 1872, p. 4; the Baltimore County Union of 26 Oct credits the Wilmington Tribune as origin). The campaign had assumed a lost column of several promoters' names; the page shows a single man. He is the same Robert Fowler who pledged $5,000 at the July 1873 meeting on the beach — so the 1873 'conception' meeting is a second run at a scheme he had already floated nine months earlier.
Somebody was pitching a hotel on that beach in 1872. The one that got built in 1875 was not the first idea — just the first one with a railroad behind it.
Isaac Coffin Cottage SiteThe BeachRobert Fowler
Source · checked 2026-08-06
1873 · 1873-07-08
'The Synepuxent Hotel is now open' — a Berlin correspondent reports a working beach hotel two years before Ocean City existed.
Writing from Berlin, Md. on July 8, 1873, the Wilmington Daily Commercial's regular correspondent 'Occasional' reported that the Synepuxent Hotel 'is now open for the accommodation of any who desire to enjoy the Beach. We have a grand beach. Crowds usually come to it every summer.' This is a contemporary, first-hand notice of paying beach accommodation on the Worcester County strand two years before the Atlantic Hotel opened — and it names the house something other than the Rhode Island Inn, the establishment the received local history credits to Isaac Coffin. Whether the Synepuxent Hotel was Coffin's house under a promotional name, a mainland house at the bay landing, or a separate operation is not settled by this notice.
The lore says one cottage. The 1873 newspaper says a hotel, a crowd, and a summer habit already in place. Ocean City was not built on an empty beach; it was built on a beach people were already going to.
Source · checked 2026-08-06
1874 · 1874-07-28
A year before the town existed, the beach was "lined" with visitors and Coffin's was "perfectly jammed" — with whiskey flowing in a dry county.
From the same July 28, 1874 Berlin letter: "On last Thursday [the] beach was lined with them. It was also a big day at Coffin's. He was perfectly jammed and it is said whiskey flows freely there notwithstanding this is a local option county. His visitors secure it elsewhere likely." Later in the letter: "Coffin is full, every private boarding house in [town] overrun … Some come seeking health, others fun, while no inconsiderable [number come for an] old-fashioned 'spree.'" Isaac Coffin's beach house — the strand's only lodging by tradition — was running at capacity a full year before the Atlantic Hotel opened, and it was doing so in a county that had voted itself dry three months earlier.
Source · checked 2026-08-06
1874 · 1874-08-12
A visiting editor describes Coffin's in August 1874 — and places the house on the BAY, with the ocean two miles away across the water.
A Delaware editor's letter "A Visit to Chincoteague," printed in the Smyrna Times of 12 August 1874, gives the only known first-hand description of Isaac Coffin's establishment before Ocean City existed. Of the man: "At this point we took a stage for Coffin Beach, on the Atlantic coast. A six miles ride, after dark, brought us to [Coffin's], our coachman being the veritable Coffin himself, the owner of one of the finest resorts on the Atlantic and two farms adjoining. A more unassuming, clever, farmer-landlord could not be found than Mr. Coffin." Of the place: "Coffin's is on Sinepuxent Bay, which lies between the hotel and the mighty Atlantic, whose ceaseless roar could be heard from our bed chamber. The bay is separated from the ocean by only a narrow strip of sand beach, not more than a hundred yards wide in many places. The sea and its dashing surf is reached by a sail of two miles across the bay, which is one of the most enjoyable things known to Coffin's. It is grander even than the surf bathing, which is equal to any on the coast, if we may except our own Rehoboth." The party danced till nearly midnight, then sailed forty miles down the bay to Chincoteague next day with "Nealey (son of the landlord) at the helm."
Every retelling puts Isaac Coffin's inn on the sand where the Boardwalk now runs. The one contemporary description we have puts it on the mainland shore, with the barrier strip and the surf two miles off across the water — and the guests sailing over for the day.
Coffin's — sources disagree on whether the house stood on the beach itself or on the bay shore opposite
Source · checked 2026-08-06
1874 · 1874-09-14
A very large whale washes up on the beach "not far below Coffin's," and Josh Carey goes after the skeleton.
From the Berlin letter of September 14, 1874: "A few days ago a very large whale was beached not far below Coffin's. It was considerably decayed, having been captured and killed some time ago. Josh Carey expects [to secure the prize] for its skeleton, which he is … seeking to secure." It is the second recorded whale on this strand in five years — the 1869 pass found one on the Worcester beach as well — and it fixes Coffin's as the landmark by which locals gave positions on an otherwise featureless shore.
Source · checked 2026-08-06
1875 · 1875-07-27
Before the first season ended, a second hotel was announced — by Taber and Coffin, the two names already on this beach.
"The [Salisbury] Advertiser learns from good authority that Messrs. Tabor & Coffin will erect another large hotel on the beach at Ocean City. It will be completed and opened for guests for the Centennial season," the Wilmington Daily Commercial reported on July 27, 1875. Both names are already in this dataset: Stephen Taber held the 1869 state patent for "The Lady's Resort to the Ocean," the 280-acre tract that became the town, and Isaac Coffin is the man traditionally credited with the Rhode Island Inn, the beach's first paying lodging. By September the Salisbury Advertiser had a second report: "There will probably be another hotel erected at Ocean City, as a party of Wilmington and Salisbury gentlemen have been prospecting for a suitable site. It will be completed by next season."
The town was two months old and already had a rival hotel scheme — run by the landowner and the innkeeper who were there before the company arrived.
Unverified — sourced but not confirmed against a primary record.
Source · checked 2026-08-06