Cyprian Sterry

[3][5] In 1779, while living in London, Sterry swore an oath of allegiance to the United States and was issued a passport by Benjamin Franklin so that he could ship Dutch cloth to America, a general business enterprise that was presented to Franklin as serving the patriotic purpose of being a source of blankets for the Continental Army.

[3] In 1785 he sold an interest in the slave ship Industry, a brigantine, to American Revolutionary War veteran Silas Talbot.

[2]: 239  According to historian Peter J. Coleman, "His extensive trading connections had taken his ships to Europe, the Orient, the Guinea coast, and the Caribbean.

"[3] Georgetown University holds a logbook of a slave ship, the Mary, funded by Sterry and captained by one Nathan Sterry, that visited "Senegambia, Windward Coast, and Gold Coast" and sold the approximately 100 slaves that survived the trip to the port of Savannah in 1796 to a "Mr. Robertson of Charleston and a Spanish merchant.

[8] Sterry was bullied out of the business by a combination of the law and "the Providence Abolition Society, which threatened to sue him unless he signed a document promising to never engage in the African slave trade again.

[9]: 433  Sterry applied for relief from the Rhode Island General Assembly but they apparently were not receptive to his petitions and so he spent a large part of the next decade in and out of debtor's prison as his creditors pressed for repayment.

Apparently, either he had been trying to raise cash to meet his obligations or he had been making 'wash' sales in an effort to put some of his property out of the reach of his creditors.

[14] Robert Sterry was the American consul at La Rochelle, France prior to his death in a shipwreck off Southhampton, Long Island in 1820.