[1] His father was born in Lyme, Connecticut, in 1695, but immigrated to Guadeloupe in 1717, where he remained for the rest of his life.

[3] He moved from Guadeloupe to the United States at age 17 after being hired as a deckhand on a slave-trading vessel owned by Simeon Potter.

Soon after arriving in 1744, he married Potter's sister, Abigail, and shortly after, joined Simeon 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 after his house was burnt in an attack on the town by British and Hessian forces in 1778, he relocated his family to a farm in Swansea, Massachusetts.

Among his eight sons and seven daughters,[citation needed] Senator James DeWolf was the twelfth child.