Profile Text
Date of Birth: January 17, 1759
Place of Birth: Cuttyhunk Island, Gosnold, Massachusetts
Date of Death: September 9, 1817
Place of Death: Westport, Massachusetts, U.S.
Ethnicity: * father – Akan Ashanti Ghanaian * mother – Aquinnah Wampanoag Native American
Paul Cuffe, or Paul Cuffee, was an American Quaker businessperson, sea captain and whaler, patriot, and abolitionist.
Paul was the son of Ruth Moses and Kofi/Coffe/Cuffe Slocum. Paul’s father was of the Ashanti ethnic group, from the Ashanti region in Ghana, who was captured as a child and sold into slavery, c. 1720. He was manumitted by his owner John Slocum, a Quaker, in the 1740s. Paul’s mother, who was from Massachusetts, was a Native American, of the Aquinnah Wampanoag nation, from Harwich, Cape Cod. Paul was married to Alice Abel Pequit, a Wampanoag woman, with whom he had seven children.
His five times great-nephew is film director, producer, screenwriter, rapper, and communist activist Boots Riley .
Source: Story of Kofi/Cuffe Slocum – https://paulcuffe.org