Black Continental Army doctor Cuffee Saunders uses enlistment pay to purchase his freedom, 1777

This certificate verifies that enslaver Israel Wells received Cuffee (Wells) Saunders’s Continental Army enlistment pay to secure Saunders’s freedom. Cuffee Saunders was born in Guiana. While his exact birth date is unknown, records suggest he was born in the mid-1700s. As a child, Saunders was kidnapped and forcibly brought to Connecticut, where he was enslaved. Records show that he was sold at least once, to a Hartford-area doctor and apothecary, Israel Wells.

In 1777, Saunders enlisted in the Continental Army. His “considerable medical skill” was quickly noticed by his military superiors, and he was assigned duty as a “waiter,” or assistant, to the surgeon general of an Army hospital in Danbury. In this capacity, he helped with medical procedures and prepared pharmaceuticals at the apothecary store, earning the title of “Doctor Cuffee.” In the spring of 1778, Saunders was briefly transferred to Valley Forge and is listed on the muster rolls as “tending the sick.” After the war, Saunders married and bought three acres of land in Lebanon, Connecticut, with his soldier’s pay.

In the late 1830s, almost half a century after Saunders’s death from influenza, his widow took advantage of a new law to apply for his Revolutionary War pension. The application dragged on for years and required testimonies by prominent Norwich residents about Saunders’s history, his notable service, and the high standing in which he and his wife were held. These eventually swayed officials, and Phillis Saunders was finally granted her husband’s wartime pension in 1843.

In this statement dated 1781, Richard Lamb and John Nutter verified that Cuffee Saunders enlisted in the Continental Army in May 1777 and earned a bounty of 30 pounds, part of which was used to purchase his freedom. Likewise, Justice of the Peace Benjamin Huntington confirmed that Saunders’s commanding officer, Captain Jedediah Hyde of Norwich, “always understood that the money that was given to Saunders at his Enlistment Purchased his Freedom.” The paperwork here is for “Cuffee Wells,” Wells being the name of Cuffee’s former enslaver. When Cuffee entered the Army, he was still known as Cuffee Wells, but during the war he took the last name Saunders.

Excerpts

This Certifies, that we Subscribers, in May 1777. Belonged to A Class in the Town of Norwich To Procure a Soldier for the Continental Army. . . . and that Said Class Hir’d Cuffee Wells, a Free Negro to Enlist Into the Continental Service During the War, and Gave him Besides the Publick Bounty Thirty Pounds for Inlisting. . . . the money that was Given to Cuffee at his Inlistment Purchased his Freedom.