Paul Cuffee - Early Life

Early Life

Paul Cuffee was born on January 17, 1759 during the French and Indian War, on Cuttyhunk Island, Massachusetts. He 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 own Quaker values and gave Kofi his freedom in the mid-1740s. Kofi took the name Cuffee Slocum and, in 1746, he married Ruth Moses. Ruth was a Native American member of the Wampanoag Nation on Martha's Vinyard. Cuffee Slocum worked as a skilled carpenter, farmer and fisherman and taught himself to read and write. He worked diligently to earn enough money to buy a home and in 1766 bought a 116-acre (0.47 km2) farm in nearby Dartmouth, Massachusetts. The couple would raise ten children together, of which Paul was the seventh in line.

During Paul Cuffee's infancy there was no Quaker meeting house on Cuttyhunk Island, so Kofi taught himself the Scriptures. In 1766, when Paul was eight years old, the family moved to a farm in Dartmouth, Massachusetts. Cuffee Slocum died in 1772, when Paul was thirteen. As Paul's two eldest brothers had families of their own elsewhere, he and his brother John took over their father's farm operations and cared for their mother and three younger sisters. Around 1778 Paul persuaded his brothers and sisters to use their father's English first name, Cuffee, as their family name, and all but the youngest did. His mother, Ruth Moses, died on January 6, 1787.