Paul Cuffe

Life & family

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.