Coffee as a last name

[Joel S. Berson]

At 12/4/2007 12:39 AM, Wilson Gray wrote:
>I've also known black people
>surnamed "Coffee," which may be derived from "Cuffee," but that's only
>a WAG.

I suspect there is evidence for this in the literature on slavery in
colonial times, perhaps particularly in the immediate Revolutionary
period, when blacks (at least in the North) thought "freedom for all"
included them, and adopted the white custom of using two names.

Joel

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