William Coffin Reiff was born on November 13, 1845, in Pennsylvania to John and Beulah Reiff. His father worked as a laborer. He grew up and attended school in Montgomery, Pennsylvania, and by 1860, he was working as an apprentice shoemaker in Perkiomen, Pennsylvania.

 

He enlisted in the Union army on November 14, 1861, and he mustered in as a private in Company H of the 91^st Pennsylvania Infantry. The regiment took part in the Battle of Fredericksburg, the Battle of Chancellorsville, the Battle of Gettysburg, the Overland Campaign, the siege of Petersburg, and the Appomattox campaign. He was promoted to sergeant on May 15, 1865, and he mustered out on July 10, 1865.

 

Reiff settled in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, after the war. He joined the Baptist Church in the fall of 1865. As an early biographer noted, he “enlisted in the army of the Mighty One of Israel…making a valiant soldier in this army as he had in the service of his country.” His tombstone later declared him a member of the “Army of Christ.” He reportedly “prepar[ed] himself for Missionary work in Japan,” but poor health forced him to change his plans and become a teacher.

 

He graduated from Crittenden Business College and the Millersville State Normal School. He married Sara Ann Curl on September 15, 1874, and they had at least three children: Martha, born around 1875; Sarah, born around 1883; and Mary, born around 1888. They moved to Indiana in the mid-1870s. He applied for a federal pension in June 1876 and eventually secured one. They moved to Kansas in 1878, and he worked as a teacher there. His health, however, remained poor, and the family moved to Carlsbad, New Mexico, in 1892. By 1900, he was working in the real estate business. According to a local writer, his “strength was not equal to the strain and during the greater portion of his residence here he was too ill to work.” He died of tuberculosis in Carlsbad on April 4, 1913.

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