Paul Cuffe
Paul Cuffe, also known as Paul Cuffee was an Black American and Wampanoag businessman, whaler and abolitionist. Born free into a multiracial family on Cuttyhunk Island, Massachusetts, Cuffe became a successful merchant and sea captain. His mother, Ruth Moses, was a Wampanoag from Harwich, Cape Cod, and his father an Ashanti captured as a child in West Africa and sold into slavery in Newport, Rhode Island, about 1720. In the mid-1740s, his father was manumitted by his Quaker owner, John Slocum. His parents married in 1747 in Dartmouth, Massachusetts.
After Cuffe's father died when the youth was thirteen, he and his older brother, John, inherited the family farm. They resided there with their mother and three younger sisters. The following year Cuffe signed on to the first of three whaling voyages to the West Indies. During the Revolutionary War, Cuffe delivered goods to Nantucket by slipping through a British blockade on a small sailboat. After the war, he built a lucrative shipping business along the Atlantic Coast and in other parts of the world. He also built his own ships in a boatyard on the Westport River. In Westport, Massachusetts, he founded the first racially integrated school in the United States.
A devout Quaker, Cuffe joined the Westport Friends Meeting in 1808. He often spoke at the Sunday services at the Westport Meeting House and also at other Quaker meetings in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. In 1813, he donated half the money for a new meeting house in Westport, and oversaw the construction. The building still survives. Few Americans of color were admitted to the Friends Meeting at that time.
Cuffe became involved in the British effort to found a colony in Sierra Leone, to which the British had transported more than 1,000 former slaves originally from America. Some had been enslaved by American Patriots and had sought refuge and freedom behind British lines during the war. After the British were defeated, they took those former slaves first to Nova Scotia and London. Prodded by Black Loyalists such as Thomas Peters, who had agitated for a return to Africa, the British in 1792 offered the Nova Scotia blacks a chance to set up a colony of their own in Sierra Leone, where they resettled.
At the urging of leading British abolitionists, in 1810 Cuffe sailed to Sierra Leone to learn about conditions for the settlers and whether he could help them. He concluded that efforts should be made to increase the local production of exportable commodities and develop their own shipping capabilities rather than continuing to export freed slaves. Cuffe sailed to England to meet with members of The African Institution, who were also leading abolitionists. He offered his recommendations to improve the lives of all the people in Sierra Leone. His recommendations were well received in London and he subsequently made two more trips to Sierra Leone to try to implement them.
On his last trip in 1815–16, he transported nine families of free blacks from Massachusetts to Sierra Leone to assist and work with the former slaves and other local residents to develop their economy. Some historians relate Cuffe's work to the "Back to Africa" movement being promoted by the newly organized American Colonization Society. A group made up of both Northerners and Southerners, it was focused on resettling free blacks from the United States to Africa – eventually resulting in development of Liberia. The leaders of the ACS had sought Paul Cuffe's advice and support for their effort. After some hesitation, and given the strong objections by free blacks in Philadelphia and New York City to the ACS proposal, Cuffe chose not to support the ACS. He believed his efforts in providing training, machinery and ships to the people of Africa would enable them to improve their lives and rise in the world.
Biography
Early life
Paul Cuffe was born on January 17, 1759, on Cuttyhunk Island, Massachusetts. He was the youngest son of Coffe Slocum and his wife Ruth Moses. Kofi was an Ashanti slave of Akan heritage. The Ashanti form of slavery was different from American chattel slavery, in a number of ways. Ashanti slaves had legal rights, could own property, inherit property and marry, though they were also put to death upon the passing of their slave master.At around 10 years of age, Kofi was either seized or sold to Fanti middlemen, the first step in the Atlantic slave trade. On the West African coast he was traded to representatives of the Royal African Company and shipped to Newport, Rhode Island, where he was purchased by Ebenezer Slocum, a Quaker farm owner in Dartmouth, Massachusetts. In 1742, Slocum sold Kofi to his nephew, John Slocum, for 150 pounds. John apparently intended to free Kofi after he had gained his purchase price in labor, and manumitted him around 1745.
Kofi took the last name of Slocum, his former owner. In 1746, he married Ruth Moses. She was a member of the Wampanoag Nation, and had been born and raised on Cape Cod.
At that time, Kofi was working as a paid laborer for Holder Slocum, the son of Peleg Slocum, who had a large farm in Dartmouth and also owned the westernmost Elizabeth Islands, off the south coast of Massachusetts. Holder Slocum and his neighbors transported sheep to those islands for grazing during the summer months. He hired Kofi Slocum to care for those sheep; in about 1750, Kofi moved with his family to the westernmost island, known as Cuttyhunk.
There he built a house and lived year-round with his family for the next 15 years. The last eight children of Coffe and Ruth were born on Cuttyhunk, including Paul, the seventh child and youngest of four boys. They had the only house and may have been the only full-time residents on Cuttyhunk. Members of the Wampanoag tribe likely lived, at least seasonally, on nearby islands in the Elizabeth chain and also on Martha's Vineyard. In 1766, Coffe and Ruth bought a farm in nearby Dartmouth, and moved to the mainland with their ten children in the spring of 1767.
Coffe Slocum died in 1772, when Paul was 13 years old. As their two eldest brothers by then had families of their own elsewhere, Paul and his brother John took over their father's farm operations. They also supported their mother and several sisters.
Around 1777–1778, when he was 19, Paul's older brother John decided to use a version of his father's first name, Coffe, as his last name. Several of his siblings did the same, but not all. Paul later signed his name on correspondence, deeds, and his will by spelling "Coffe", with a "u" instead of an "o". In the national census of 1790, 1800 and 1810 his last name is recorded as "Cuff"; census takers sometimes wrote only how names sounded and were not required to meet the people whose names they're recording. Paul's mother, Ruth Moses, died on January 6, 1787.
Time as a mariner
In 1773, the year after his father's death and again in 1775, Paul Cuffe sailed on whaling ships, getting a chance to learn navigation. In his journal, he identified as a marineer. In 1776 after the start of the Revolutionary War, he sailed on a whaler but it was captured by the British. He and the rest of the crew were held as prisoners of war for three months in New York City before being released. Cuffe returned to his family in what is now Westport, Massachusetts. In 1779, he and his brother David borrowed a small sailboat to reach the nearby islands. Although his brother was afraid to sail in dangerous seas, Cuffe set forth, probably with a friend as crew in 1779 to deliver cargo to Nantucket. He was waylaid by pirates on this and several subsequent voyages. Finally, he made a trip to Nantucket that turned a profit. He reportedly continued to make these trips to Nantucket throughout the war.In 1780, at the age of 21, Paul and his brother John Cuffe refused to pay taxes because free blacks did not have the right to vote in Massachusetts. In 1780, they petitioned the council of Bristol County, Massachusetts, to end such taxation without representation, which had been an issue of colonists that led many to the Revolution. The petition was denied, but his suit contributed to the state legislature decision in 1783 to grant voting rights to all free male citizens of the state.
After the war ended, Cuffe entered into a partnership with his brother-in-law, Michael Wainer, to build ships and establish a shipping business along the Atlantic Coast. He gradually built up capital and expanded to a fleet of ships. After using open boats, he commissioned the 14- or 15-ton closed-deck ship Box Iron, and then an 18- to 20-ton schooner. In 1789 he and Wainer set up their own shipyard on the east bank of the Acoaxet River, in the new town of Westport which had been carved from Old Dartmouth. He continued to build ships for the next 25 years.
Paul's sister Mary had married Michael Wainer in 1772; they had seven sons together between 1773 and 1793. Many as men became crew members and even captains on ships owned by their father and uncle. Jeremiah Wainer and his two sons were lost at sea in 1804 when one of the family ships went down.
Marriage and family
On February 25, 1783, Cuffe married the widow Alice Abel Pequit. Like Cuffe's mother, Alice was a Wampanoag woman. The couple settled first in an "Indian-style" house near Destruction Brook in Dartmouth and later in Westport, Massachusetts, where they raised their seven children: Naomi, Mary, Ruth, Alice, Paul Jr., Rhoda, and William. David, Jonathan, and John became farmers, married, and lived in West Point, New York. Of Cuffe's six daughters, four married, while two remained single.Shipping
In 1787, Paul Cuffe and his brother-in-law, Michael Wainer built their first ship together, a 25-ton schooner Sunfish. It was the beginning of a long partnership between the two men and their families. Their next ship was the 40-ton schooner Mary that was built in their own boatyard on the Acoaxet River. They then sold the Mary and Sunfish to finance construction of the Ranger – a 69-ton schooner launched in 1796 again from Cuffe's shipyard in Westport. In 1799 Cuffe added to his shipyard property, increasing it from 0.22 acres to 0.33 acres to provide more room for both his family home and the boatyard.By 1800 he had enough capital to build and hold a half-interest in the 162-ton barque Hero. At that time Cuffe was one of the most wealthy – if not the most wealthy – African American or Native American in the United States. His largest ship, the 268-ton Alpha, was built in 1806, and his favorite ship, the 109-ton brig Traveller the following year. In 1811, when Cuffe took the Traveller into Liverpool, The Times of London reported that it was probably the first vessel to reach Europe that was "entirely owned and navigated by Negroes."