Pardon B. Gifford Collection G-470
[G-470 Paul Cuffe]
Captain Paul Cuffee [sic]
Pardon B. Gifford (American)
4 x 5 inch glass negative; copy of a lithograph

PAUL CUFFE
The son of a slave, he became the first American capitalist-entrepreneur of African ancestry. Beginning in the 1770s, with his brothers he built small boats, made short whaling cruises, and studied navigation and seamanship, working up to successively larger vessels and longer voyages -- until he emerged as an important whaling captain, merchant, and shipowner at Westport, Massachusetts.