CEPHAS THOMPSON | PAIR OF PORTRAITS: CAPTAIN CHARLES DEWOLF AND ELIZABETH ROGERSON

Skinner's Boston, American Furniture & Decorative Arts, November 8, 2009, sale 2482, lot 477.

Captain Charles Potter DeWolf (1745-1820) was a highly accomplished and talented man of his time, who also belonged to one of the most successful and notorious Rhode Island families involved in the slave trade in the late 18th and early 19th centuries. Son of Mark Anthony and Abigail (Potter) DeWolf, Charles was a master mariner, astute business man, philanthropist, and two-war veteran, serving in the American Revolutionary War as well as the War of 1812, and funding the building of Bristol’s first public library and later a free public school. He and son, General George DeWolf, were also predominate owners of the 250-ton fully-rigged ship "Juno," which sailed the northwestern coast of the United States and participated in trade with Russia. While Charles’ brother, James DeWolfe, succeeded his father as the family patriarch and was the most egregious in the trade, having been charged for murder after ordering a female slave infected with smallpox to be thrown overboard on a slaving voyage, Charles acted as a financial consultant allowing the family to prosper. After the death of his first wife, Mary Tyler, in 1876, DeWolf remarried twice: to his second wife, Elizabeth Rogers, in 1789, and to his third wife, Abigail Greene.

For more information on Charles DeWolf and his family, see William Richard Cutter, New England Families, Genealogical and Memorial, (New York: Lewis Historical Publishing Company, 1915), p. 2261.