Paul Cuffe: Pioneering Black Entrepreneur – Black History Month

In addition to his family Paul Cuffe remembered the Society of Friends in Westport, leaving fifty dollars to �be paid over to their treasurer, by my executors, according to the direction of the monthly meeting.�� Cuffe�s parents are said to have adhered to Quaker principles though they were not Quakers.� Cuffe joined the Westport Meeting and assumed Quaker dress in 1808.� He obtained traveling letters from the Meeting before embarking on his voyages to Sierra Leone and his trip to Washington to meet with President Madison.� He contributed his services to the Meeting as an active member of various financial, investigative, and building committees and as the principal financial contributor to the building in 1813 of the sparely elegant Meeting House in the graveyard of which Paul Cuffe and his wife are buried.

The inventory of Cuffe�s estate discloses his complex relationships with Westport neighbors, his commercial interests, and his personal acquisitions.� His real estate included not only the land and buildings mentioned but a six-acre woodlot, two meadows, and a cedar swamp.� The total value of his real estate was assessed at $4,119.� The most valuable item in his personal estate was the brig Traveller, assessed at $1,800, the next was his share of the salt works on Joseph Tripp�s land $800, then there were the thirty-three notes and obligations, primarily mortgages on land, that were owed to his estate by black and white Westport residents that totaled approximately $4,158 and revealed a web of obligation among kin and neighbors to one of the most affluent members of the Westport community.� The inventory of his numerous possessions discloses traces of his entrepreneurial endeavors as merchant mariner, shipbuilder, and farmer.� Among the items assessed are iron hoops, old rigging, charts, fish hooks, whale lancets, half pint French tumblers,� African peppers, casks of varnish, timbers and boards, saws and planes, scythes and plough shares, oxen,� hens and lambs.� His household items included� a large looking glass, 6 Windsor chairs, trunks and chests, beds, bolsters, pillows, quilts, sheets, large plates and small plates, pitchers and teapots, cream pots and sugar bowls, skillets and kettles,� knives and forks.� His wearing apparel that was to be divided between his two sons was also itemized.� ��Finally there is his library of books that this self-educated man treasured�his Bible, his two-volume dictionary, a concordance, as well as books and pamphlets on history, art, and other topics.��� His appraisers assessed his personal property as totaling $14,022.57.� They also noted additional obligations owed to him in Sierra Leone.� Perhaps the appraisers did not enter these obligations in their summation, because they thought that they were less likely to be met than those closer to hand in Westport.� Paul Cuffe�s will and the inventory of his estate reveal aspects of his life concerns and achievements but fail to convey the full texture of his remarkable life journey.