Cuffee Saunders
Born into slavery, Cuffee Saunders secured his freedom by serving during the Revolutionary War.
Early Life
Cuffee Saunders was born into slavery in Guiana, a British colony in South America, in about 1750. When he was a child, he was taken to Connecticut, where he was sold to a Hartford doctor and later to an apothecary, Israel Wells. Saunders’s experience with these two men gave him medical and pharmaceutical knowledge.
Joining the Military
In 1777, Saunders, then known as Cuffee Wells, enlisted in the Continental Army. As a new recruit he was paid an enlistment bounty of £30. Israel Wells agreed to free him in exchange for part of that bounty. Saunders then served as a private in the 4th Connecticut Regiment. His military records are under the name Cuffee Wells.
Military Service
Saunders was assigned duty as a “waiter,” or assistant, to Dr. Philip Turner, surgeon general of the hospital of the Northern Division of the Army. He helped with medical procedures at the hospital in Danbury, Connecticut, and prepared medications at the apothecary, earning the title of “Doctor Cuffee.” In 1778, Saunders was temporarily transferred to Valley Forge, Pennsylvania, and is listed on the muster rolls at the encampment as “tending the sick” from June through September 1778. He then returned to his position in Danbury, where he served through the end of the war.
Legacy
After the Revolutionary War, Cuffee went by the last name of Saunders. He married Phillis Hinkley in 1783 and bought three acres of land in Lebanon, Connecticut. He continued to practice medicine until he died of influenza in December 1788. He was buried in an unmarked grave on his family’s property. Cuffee and Phillis’s son, Prince Saunders, attended Dartmouth College, became an educator, and served as Haiti’s attorney general.
Verification of the marriage between Cuffee Saunders and Phillis Hinkley from pension files, dated October 30, 1834. National Archives.
In the late 1830s, Phillis Saunders applied to receive a widow’s pension for her husband’s Revolutionary War service. The application dragged on for years due to record mismanagement. Prominent residents near Lebanon wrote letters of support that document Saunders’s history and his notable service. Phillis was finally granted her husband’s pension in 1843.
Phillis Saunders’s approved widow’s pension from July 29, 1843. National Archives.
