CUFFE, PAUL (aka Paul Cuffee, 17 January 1759–7 September 1817), American businessman, whaler, and abolitionist. A successful merchant and sea captain, Cuffe was born free on Cuttyhunk Island, Massachusetts. His mother was a Wampanoag and his father was an Ashanti captured in West Africa as a child and sold into slavery around 1720. His father was manumitted by his Quaker owner, John Slocum. As a teenager, Cuffe signed on to the first of three whaling voyages to the West Indies. During the Revolutionary War, he delivered goods through the British blockade via a small sailboat. After the war, Cuffe built a lucrative shipping business along the Atlantic Coast and in other parts of the world. He would later build his own ships and a boatyard on the Westport River in Massachusetts.
Through these businesses, he became one of the wealthiest Black Americans of his time, but used much of his earnings to support the welfare of Black and formerly enslaved communities in the town of Westport—where he founded the first racially integrated school in the United States—and elsewhere.
Cuffe was a devout Quaker. He often spoke at Sunday services at the Westport Meeting House and in Philadelphia. In 1913, Cuffe oversaw the construction of a new meeting house for the Westport Friends and donated half of the funding needed to build it. He was involved in the British effort to found a colony in Sierra Leone, and in 1810, at the urging of British abolitionists, Cuffe sailed to Sierra Leone to learn about the conditions of the settlers. Upon his return, Cuffe sailed to England to meet with members of the African Institution, an organization that included the leading abolitionists of the time. There, he offered recommendations on the colony’s local production of exportable commodities, its shipping capabilities, and its continued reception of freed slaves. These recommendations were well received in London, and Cuffe subsequently made two more trips to Sierra Leone. Although Cuffe chose not to support it, instead focusing his efforts on providing infrastructure and ships to the people of Africa, his work with former slaves and other local Black residents on economic liberation was tied to the early formation of the “Back to Africa” movement promoted by the American Colonization Society (ACS), which centered on the resettlement of freed American slaves to Africa. These efforts eventually resulted in the development of Liberia. Cuffe died in Westport, and his funeral ceremony was well attended. He was remembered for the modesty of his last words: “Let me pass quietly away.”