Enslaved in 18th century Guilford, Cuff served some of the most prominent individuals in town, among them ministers, merchants, and the grandfather of Harriet Beecher Stowe. Otherwise, available records tell us very little about him. The fact that he went by the name Cuff, a West African name often given to boys who were born on Friday, suggests that he may have been born in Africa or the West Indies or, at the very least, that he was able to hold on to an identity inherited through his forebears. There is no record indicating his birth date, but he appears to have been an adult when his enslaver, Rev. Thomas Ruggles, died in 1767. In the will Ruggles wrote 11 years prior, he promised Cuff to his heir and namesake, grandson Thomas Ruggles Pynchon. After Ruggles’ death, Cuff seems to have been rented for a period to Eli Foote, Harriet Beecher Stowe’s grandfather. Later, we may see him in an 1800 census record for Sarah Ruggles Pynchon, Thomas Ruggles’ daughter and the mother of Thomas Ruggles Pynchon. In the 1808 settlement of Sarah Ruggles Pynchon’s estate, we see a debt she owed for the “care of Cuff.”  The records do not show when he died.