Cyprian Sterry
American slave trader (c. 1753–1825)
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." 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 grew up and worked in 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. His father was also called Cyprian Sterry and had moved to Providence from Preston, Connecticut, shortly after Cyprian II was born in about 1752.
He served in the American Revolutionary War as a quartermaster and brigade major for the Rhode Island brigade organized in 1776. He was apparently captured while visiting London because he escaped from a British prison in October 1778. 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. After returning to America he was again attached to the Army, and again associated with Nathanael Greene.
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This entry incorporates text from “Cyprian Sterry” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.