Mary (Mai) Huttleston Rogers Coe - Marriage, Children

Marriage, Children

Mai's first marriage was annulled. Her father and her close family friend Mark Twain both labeled her first husband a "scalawag".

However, her second marriage fared much better. On June 4, 1900, at her father's home in New York City, 24 year-old Mai Rogers married William Robertson Coe, a 30-year old English-born insurance company manager from Philadelphia, whom she had met on a transatlantic crossing. It was the second marriage for each.

Mai Rogers was married in full virginal bridal regalia, "gowned in white satin, veiled with exquisitely embroidered tulle, and wore a veil of tulle embroidered to match the tulle draperies of the dress," The New York Times reported the day after the wedding. "This veil was caught to her coiffure with a diamond sunburst, and at one side of her corsage she wore a Maltese cross in diamonds, the gift of the bridegroom."

Mai and William Robertson Coe had four children: William Rogers Coe (1901–1971), Robert Douglas Coe (1902–1985), Henry Huttleston Rogers Coe (1907–1966), and Natalie Mai Coe (1910–1987).

By 1910, William Robertson Coe had become president of Johnson and Higgins Insurance Co., and was involved in insuring the hull of the RMS Titanic which sank on its maiden voyage in 1912. Like many other famous families of the Gilded Age, the Coe family had been booked for the ill-fated liner's return trip to Southampton, England. By 1916, Coe had been named Chairman of the Board of Johnson and Higgins.

Coe was on the Board of Directors of The Virginian Railway Company from 1910 until his death in 1955, and headed the company for a brief period during World War II. He was also a director of Loup Creek Colliery and the Wyoming Land Company. Their oldest son, William Rogers Coe, was also a longtime official of his grandfather's railroad.