Cuffee is an Akan name given to boys who are born on a Friday. We do not know when he arrived in Rhodes Island. He was enslaved by the Rev. Joseph Torrey, the first minister of what is now the Kingston Congregational Church. Documents show that he was occasionally loaned out to work for others. He married Sylvia while still enslaved. They had at least one son, Lewis, together. By 1790, he is listed as a freed man in the census record. As a freed man, he worked as a fisherman. He and Sylvia probably lived along Ministerial Road in Providence. It was an area where many freed blacks lived. He died in in 1813, when he was between 70 and 80 years old.