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Margaret Louise Coit was an American historian who wrote on American history for both adults and children.
Coit was born in Norwich, Connecticut, to Archa Willoughby Coit, a stockbroker, and Grace Coit, the principal of a private day school. Two years later, Margaret's sister Grace was born with Down Syndrome. Caring for Grace would take up much of Coit's adult life.
At the start of the Great Depression, Coit's family moved to Greensboro, North Carolina, where Coit attended Curry School, a training school located on the grounds of Woman's College. Coit graduated Curry School in 1937 and went on to study history and English at Woman's College, where she edited the college magazine, wrote for the school paper, and studied with professors such as Caroline Tate and Mildred Gould.
Meanwhile, Coit's parents had moved to West Newbury, Massachusetts, and after graduating in 1941, she moved north to work as a reporter for the newspapers of surrounding towns—the Lawrence Daily Eagle, Newburyport Daily News, and Haverhill Gazette. Over the next nine years, Coit also performed extensive research on South Carolina statesman John C. Calhoun, in whom she had developed an interest while still a school child at Curry. John C. Calhoun, American Portrait was published by Houghton Mifflin to critical acclaim in 1950 and Coit won the annual Pulitzer Prize for Biography or Autobiography.
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