Mark Anthony DeWolf
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Mark Anthony DeWolf | |
|---|---|
 Mark Anthony DeWolf, c. 1770 | |
| Born | November 8, 1726 |
| Died | November 9, 1793 (aged 67) Bristol, Rhode Island, United States |
| Occupations | Merchant, enslaver |
Mark Anthony DeWolf (also spelled D'Wolf[a] or deWolfe; November 8, 1726 – November 9, 1793) was an American merchant and enslaver. He is known for his role in the transatlantic slave trade and was an early member of the DeWolf family of Bristol, Rhode Island, which became one of the most prominent slave-trading families in American history.
Born in 1726 in Guadeloupe, French West Indies, Mark Anthony DeWolf was the second son of Charles DeWolf and Margaret DeWolf (née Potter).[1] His father, born in Lyme, Connecticut, in 1695, immigrated to Guadeloupe in 1717, where he remained for the rest of his life.[2]
DeWolf received formal education in a French school and was fluent in several languages.[3] At the age of 17, he moved from Guadeloupe to the United States, having been hired as a deckhand on a slave-trading vessel owned by Simeon Potter. In 1744, shortly after arriving in the U.S., he married Potter's sister, Abigail. Soon after, he joined Potter on board the privateer Prince Charles of Lorraine to participate in King George's War in the West Indies.[3]
DeWolf settled in Bristol, Rhode Island, but following an attack on the town by British and Hessian forces in 1778, during which his house was burned, he relocated his family to a farm in Swansea, Massachusetts. He did not return to Bristol until shortly before his death on September 17, 1793.