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Cyprian Sterry (c. 1753 – September 1, 1825) was an 18th-century American slave trader. Based in Rhode Island, he has been described as "the main slave trader of Providence" and an "affluent and highly successful merchant-shipowner."

Career

Sterry was a native of Rhode Island, a sea-faring colony, "more dependent upon maritime enterprise than any other." It had the highest concentration of slave traders in British North America, as well as a population of abolitionist Quakers. In 1779, while living in London, Sterry swore an oath of allegiance to the United States and was issued a passport by Benjamin Franklin so that he could ship Dutch cloth to America, a general business enterprise that was presented to Franklin as serving the patriotic purpose of being a source of blankets for the Continental Army. he served in the American Revolutionary War as a quartermaster and brigade major. According to the Transatlantic Slave Trade Database, Cyprian Sterry was one of the most active slave traders based in Providence, Rhode Island. He financed at least 18 slave-trading trips and trafficked more than 1500 people from Africa to the United States before 1797. His competition included the D'Wolfs of Bristol, Caleb Gardner of Newport, William Vernon of Newport, Peleg Clarke of Newport, Aaron Lopez of Newport, and Samuel Brown.

Georgetown University holds a logbook of a slave ship, the Mary, funded by Sterry and captained by one Nathan Sterry, that visited "Senegambia, Windward Coast, and Gold Coast" and sold the approximately 100 slaves that survived the trip to the port of Savannah in 1796 to a "Mr. Robertson of Charleston and a Spanish merchant." Rhode Island prohibited the African slave trade in 1797. Sterry was bullied out of the business by a combination of the law and "the Providence Abolition Society, which threatened to sue him unless he signed a document promising to never engage in the African slave trade again." Sterry declared bankruptcy in 1807.

His son Robert Sterry killed Micajah Green Lewis in a duel in New Orleans in 1805, and was the American consul at Rochelle, France prior to his death in a shipwreck off Southhampton, Long Island in 1820.

References

1. ^ Coleman, Peter J. (1963). "The Entrepreneurial Spirit in Rhode Island History". The Business History Review. 37 (4): 319–344. doi:10.2307/3112713. ISSN 0007-6805.
2. ^ Marques, Leonardo (2012). "Slave Trading in a New World: The Strategies of North American Slave Traders in the Age of Abolition". Journal of the Early Republic. 32 (2): 233–260. ISSN 0275-1275.
3. Clark, William Bell (1953). "In Defense of Thomas Digges". The Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography. 77 (4): 381–438. ISSN 0031-4587.
4. "Founders Online: To George Washington from Brigadier General James Mitchell Var …". founders.archives.gov. Retrieved January 17, 2025.
5. ^ "Journal of the Slave Ship Mary". repository.library.georgetown.edu. Retrieved January 17, 2025.
6. Tritt, Samantha (September 14, 2020). "Slave ship logbook in library provides new insight into the slave trade in North America". The Georgetown Voice. Retrieved January 17, 2025.
7. "Duelling in old New Orleans". HathiTrust. pp. 9–12. Retrieved January 17, 2025.
8. "Robert Sterry (1782–1820), Rhode Island". Daily National Intelligencer and Washington Express. February 9, 1820. p. 3. Retrieved January 17, 2025.

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• 18th-century American slave traders
• 1825 deaths
• 1750s births
• Continental Army staff officers
• People from Rhode Island