The Death of the Illustrious African American Paul Cuffee

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Newspaper, authentic and complete issue of the Boston Commercial Gazette, September 15, 1817, 4pp., disbound. From page 2, under Deaths “At Westport on the 7th inst. Paul Cuffee, a very respectable man of color, in his 59th year of his age. A descendant of Arica; he overcame by native strength and mind ... the prejudice with which his descendants are too generally viewed. .... more particulary in the deep interest of his bretheren of the African race.He was concerned not only to set them a good example by his own correct conduct ... but more extensively to promote their welfare, and at considerable sacrifice of property, he three times visited the colony of Sierre Leon and after his first voyage thither went to England where he was much noticed by the members of the African Institute, who conferred with him on the best means of extending the benefits of civilization to people of Africa ...” Minor discolor upper right, rough at spine, VG.Paul Cuffee (1759-1817) was the youngest son of Kofi or Cuffee Slocum and Ruth Moses. Paul's father, Kofi, was a member of the Ashanti ethnic group, probably from Ghana, Africa. Kofi had been captured at age ten and brought as a slave to the British colony of Massachusetts. His owner, John Slocum, could not reconcile slave ownership with his Quaker values and gave Kofi his freedom in the mid-1740s. Paul Cuffee (Kofi) took the name Cuffee Slocum and, in 1746, he married Ruth Moses, a Native American and a member of the Wampanoag Nation on Martha's Vinyard. A Quaker businessman, Sea Captain, patriot, and abolitionist, Cuffee built a lucrative shipping empire and established the first racially integrated school in Westport, Massachusetts.

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