TJ recorded paying Coffee $2.50 for seven dozen pen-points on 12 Jan. 1822 (MB description begins James A. Bear Jr. and Lucia C. Stanton, eds., Jefferson’s Memorandum Books: Accounts, with Legal Records and Miscellany, 1767–1826, 1997, The Papers of Thomas Jefferson, Second Series description ends , 2:1382). Almost three months after Coffee arrived at monticello on the last day of 1821, TJ recorded paying him $100 on 25 Mar. 1822 for “repairing paintings” (MB description begins James A. Bear Jr. and Lucia C. Stanton, eds., Jefferson’s Memorandum Books: Accounts, with Legal Records and Miscellany, 1767–1826, 1997, The Papers of Thomas Jefferson, Second Series description ends , 2:1384).

On receiving some of TJ’s paintings to sell after his death, his granddaughter Ellen W. Randolph Coolidge wrote from Boston on 13 May 1828 to her sister Virginia J. Randolph Trist that the paintings were in poor shape due to “the delapidations of time & the still more ruthless handling of Mr Coffee. his brush has been traced on several of them where after scratching off the old paint he has daubed on new.” In a letter of 28 May 1828 to her mother, Martha Jefferson Randolph, Coolidge lamented that the paintings would not obtain satisfactory prices, inasmuch as “Time, & damp, & dust, & flies, & Mr Coffee, have done their work too effectually” (ViU: Coolidge Correspondence).