The first answer is Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
I am related to him and the fictional character was Hiawatha.

The answer to the coin riddle is
Take 5 pennies from the group of 13, and flip all of them.

If I grabbed all 5 heads, then they become tails, and the groups are even at 0apiece. If I grabbed 5 tails, then they all become heads, and they are all even at 5 heads apiece. This as also true for any combination of heads and tails...