Cyprian Sterry

Cyprian Sterry in Elizabeth Donnan's extracts of American slave trade records showing his shipments went to Robert Watts, the "leading slave vendor" in Savannah, Georgia in the 1790s

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."[1] Following the end of the American Revolutionary War and the resumption of the transatlantic slave trade by three states, Sterry was a leading trafficker of slaves to the port of Savannah, Georgia. Sterry participated in the triangular trade, bringing rum to the Windward Coast and Gold Coast in exchange for captives that were resold in either Cuba or Georgia. After Rhode Island prohibited slaving in 1797, Sterry was in and out of debtors' prison for a decade before finally declaring bankruptcy in 1807.

Career

Sterry was grew up and worked in Rhode Island, a sea-faring colony, "more dependent upon maritime enterprise than any other."[1]: 322  It had the highest concentration of slave traders in British North America, as well as a population of abolitionist Quakers.[2]: 234–235  His father was also called Cyprian Sterry and had moved to Providence from Preston, Connecticut, shortly after Cyprian II was born in about 1752.[3]

He served in the American Revolutionary War as a quartermaster and brigade major for the Rhode Island brigade organized in 1776.[4][5] He was apparently captured while visiting London because he escaped from a British prison in October 1778.[3][5] 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.[6]: 402–403  After returning to America he was again attached to the Army, and again associated with Nathanael Greene.[3] In 1785 he sold an interest in the slave ship Industry, a brigantine, to American Revolutionary War veteran Silas Talbot.[7]: 835  He also invested in land in the Northwest Territory and Vermont. According to the Transatlantic Slave Trade Database, Cyprian Sterry was one of the most active slave traders based in Providence, Rhode Island.[8] He financed at least 18 slave-trading trips and trafficked more than 1500 people from Africa to the United States before 1797.[8] 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.[2]: 239  According to historian Peter J. Coleman, "His extensive trading connections had taken his ships to Europe, the Orient, the Guinea coast, and the Caribbean."[9]: 433 

The slave trade was banned by the Continental Congress during the American Revolutionary War but resumed afterward in North Carolina, Georgia, and South Carolina. Sterry was the leading vendor of African slave cargoes to Georgia in the 1790s, delivering 13 cargoes "between 1793 and 1796: one each in 1793, 1794, and 1797, five in 1795, and five in 1796.[10]: 219  He trafficked a total of 1,238 slaves to Georgia.[10]: 219  Presuming his prime was in 1795, his net worth was once estimated at US$235,000 (equivalent to $4,218,941 in 2023).[9]: 433  Sterry enslaved four people and had three "free Negroes" working at his house in Providence in 1790,[3] and John Brown got him a seat on the board of Rhode Island College, later Brown University, which position he held from 1792 until 1813.[11] In 1836 Tristam Burges wrote that the family had once lived "in a most opulent condition."[3]

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."[12] In 1795, Sterry and Welcome Arnold had a joint interest in a distillery.[13] Rhode Island prohibited the African slave trade in 1797.[8] 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."[2]: 259  In June 1798 Sterry made it known that his £15,000 in assets could not cover his $78,000 in debts.[9]: 433  Sterry applied for relief from the Rhode Island General Assembly but they apparently were not receptive to his petitions and so he spent a large part of the next decade in and out of debtor's prison as his creditors pressed for repayment.[9]: 434  In 1965, historian Coleman wrote of Sterry's indebtedness:

In all Sterry had interests in 15 vessels ranging in size from the 37-ton sloop Polly to the 232-ton ship Mary. With the exception of the 90-ton brigantine Industry, title to which was transferred in 1783, and three vessels which were captured or lost at sea, ownership of all of these vessels passed out of Sterry's hands between 1794 and 1797. Apparently, either he had been trying to raise cash to meet his obligations or he had been making 'wash' sales in an effort to put some of his property out of the reach of his creditors. It may have been allegations that he was pursuing the latter course which made the Assembly reluctant to grant him relief.[9]: 434 n. 59 

Sterry finally had a declaration bankruptcy approved in 1807.[1]: 326  Sterry applied for a Revolutionary War pension in 1820 at which time he declared he had "no property of any description whatever."[3] Cyprian Sterry died in 1825. He is buried in Providence, Rhode Island.

Robert Sterry

Cyprian Sterry's son Robert Sterry, a graduate of Brown University, killed Micajah Green Lewis in a duel in New Orleans in 1805.[14] Robert Sterry was the American consul at La Rochelle, France prior to his death in a shipwreck off Southhampton, Long Island in 1820.[15]

See also

• List of Rhode Island slave traders

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. The Sterry family of America, 1670–1970 by Walter Burges Smith (1973), pp 11, 22–27, 43–44, digitized by FamilySearch.org
4. "Founders Online: To George Washington from Brigadier General James Mitchell Var …". founders.archives.gov. Retrieved January 17, 2025.
5. "Founders Online: To Benjamin Franklin from Thomas Digges, 6 September 1779". founders.archives.gov. Retrieved 2025-01-17.
6. Clark, William Bell (1953). "In Defense of Thomas Digges". The Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography. 77 (4): 381–438. ISSN 0031-4587.
7. Verhoeven, Wil (2006). "Gilbert Imlay and the Triangular Trade". The William and Mary Quarterly. 63 (4): 827–842. ISSN 0043-5597.
8. "Journal of the Slave Ship Mary". repository.library.georgetown.edu. Retrieved January 17, 2025.
9. Coleman, Peter J. (1965). "The Insolvent Debtor in Rhode Island 1745–1828". The William and Mary Quarterly. 22 (3): 413–434. doi:10.2307/1920454. ISSN 0043-5597.
10. Wax, Darold D. (1984). ""New Negroes Are Always in Demand": The Slave Trade in Eighteenth-Century Georgia". The Georgia Historical Quarterly. 68 (2): 193–220. ISSN 0016-8297.
11. Rappleye, Charles (2007). Sons of Providence: The Brown Brothers, the Slave Trade, and the American Revolution. Simon and Schuster. p. 304. ISBN 978-0-7432-6688-8.
12. 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.
13. "Journals / Edited by Howard Greene and Alice E. Smith v.2". HathiTrust. p. 52. Retrieved 2025-01-17.
14. "Duelling in old New Orleans". HathiTrust. pp. 9–12. Retrieved January 17, 2025.
15. "Robert Sterry (1782–1820), Rhode Island". Daily National Intelligencer and Washington Express. February 9, 1820. p. 3. Retrieved January 17, 2025.