Henry Augustus Coit

Henry Augustus Coit (born 1800) lived in Cuba as a young man, and for over twenty years, invested in the sugar trade along with his partner, Moses Taylor III. Coit was fluent in Spanish and moved easily in Cuban society. Having made a fortune in the sugar trade, he maintained palatial homes in Havana, Dobbs Ferry, and Saratoga Springs, New York, until he was ruined in the panic of 1857. This miniature was painted the year he married a Boston heiress.