Through his father, he was descended from both John Coolidge (1604–1691) and Thomas Hastings who came from the East Anglia region of England to the Massachusetts Bay Colony, in 1630 and 1634 respectively.

After attending public schools and Bryant & Stratton Commercial College at its former Boston, Massachusetts, campus, Coolidge worked with his father's company in manufacturing chairs and rattan.

After being elected to the United States Senate in 1930, Coolidge served as chairman of the Committee on Immigration for the Seventy-third and Seventy-fourth Congresses, but was not a candidate for renomination in 1936.

He died at St. Francis Hospital in Miami Beach, Florida, in 1947, aged 81, and is interred at Mount Pleasant Cemetery in Westminster, Massachusetts.

[3] Coolidge was the father-in-law of Secretary of War Harry Hines Woodring and Mayor Robert E. Greenwood of Fitchburg, Massachusetts.