William Robertson Coe, the man

William Robertson Coe

The Benefactor

William Robertson Coe, also known as W.R. or Will, was born in 1869 in Worcestershire, England. Coe arrived in the United States with his family at the age of fourteen and soon after started work as an office boy for the Philadelphia marine insurance firm of Johnson & Higgins. By the age of twenty-four, Coe moved to the firm’s New York office as an adjustments manager where he determined loss settlements. Coe made his fortune with Johnson & Higgins and served as the President of the Board from 1916—1943. Coe managed the account of the shipping company White Star Lines and arranged for his firm to underwrite the Titanic which sank on April 15th, 1912. W.R. and his family made several subsequent transatlantic trips on the Titanic’s identical sister ship the Olympic.

William R. Coe was an avid outdoorsman who enjoyed horseback riding, hunting and fly fishing. In addition to his Cody sheep and cattle ranch, Coe maintained a summer home in Yemassee, South Carolina and an Oyster Bay, New York estate called Planting Fields. W.R. was actively involved with developing and improving the collections of rhododendrons, azaleas, camellias, and hibiscus. He had a particular interest in new plant varieties and innovative growing techniques. Coe donated Planting Fields to the state of New York in 1949 and it remains a premier public arboretum. Furthermore, Coe maintained a racing stable for many years and was one of the founders of New York’s Piping Rock Racing Association.

During his lifetime, W.R. Coe was married three times. His first marriage to Janice Hutchinson Falligant from 1893 to 1898 came to an early end as the result of Janice’s death from “brain fever.” Coe’s second marriage to Mai Huttleston Rogers, the Standard Oil heiress and co-owner of Planting Fields, lasted from 1900 to 1924, until Mai’s death. W.R. and Mai’s marriage resulted in four children, William Rogers Coe, Robert Douglas Coe, Henry “Hank” Huttleston Rogers Coe and Natalie Mai Coe. Coe’s third and final marriage to Caroline Graham Slaughter lasted from 1926 until his death in 1955.

Coe received honorary degrees from the University of Wyoming in 1948 and from Yale in 1949. In September, 2006, Peg Coe (W.R.’s daughter-in-law) said that the University of Wyoming’s President Humphrey was a great friend of W.R. Coe received an honorary degree while Milward Simpson was the chair of the Board of Trustees. Mrs. Coe said W.R. was very pleased to receive the honorary degree bestowed upon him by the university and that he truly loved Wyoming. On March 15th, 1955, William R. Coe died in his recently acquired Palm Beach, Florida home as the result of an asthma attack.