Abraham Redwood (February 15, 1709 – March 7, 1788) was a West Indies merchant, slave trader, plantation owner, and philanthropist from Newport, Rhode Island.

In 1727, Redwood Jr. purchased land on Aquidneck Island and began building his country home five miles north of Newport in Portsmouth.

[4] He ordered orange and fig trees, and adolescent guava and pineapple plants from the West Indies to fill his garden.

[6] The name Cassada appears to be a derivative from a cassava, a plant that produces large green leaves and a tuber that has long been a source of food for Indigenous peoples of the Americas.

As a part of this trade, Redwood sent timber and fish from Rhode Island to the Caribbean in exchange for molasses and hard currency.

Each of these voyages traveled from Newport, Rhode Island to the Gold Coast and ended in St. John's, Antigua—the site of Redwood's sugar plantation, Cassada Garden.

[11] Scipio and Oliver, two enslaved Africans Redwood kept on his plantation in Antigua, were burned at the stake for suspected involvement in a conspiracy to start a slave revolt in 1736.

[5] In 1775, the Society of Friends of Rhode Island, believing slavery and the Atlantic slave trade to be unchristian, formally asked Redwood to free the people he had enslaved.

[5] According to the Dictionary of National Biography, "Without a doubt the slave trade provided Redwood with the enormous profits that allowed him to become, as he was described at his death, 'the greatest public and private benefactor on Rhode Island.

[5] Several other prominent slave traders appear on the original list of forty-six proprietors, including William Vernon and Simon Pease.

[3] In 1764, Abraham Redwood was also one of the early benefactors of the College in the English Colony of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations, later known as Brown University.