<p>Charles DeWolf, Jr. sons and descendants were sea captains and running ships between their mansions in Newport, Rhode Island to the West Indies. For more than 75 years, from the 1760's to the 1820's, the DeWolf fathers and sons were engaged in an extensive shipping, commerce, and trading. The family business flourished in Rhode Island which providing employment for hundreds if not thousands of skilled craftsman from ship builders to carpenters, sailors and dock workers, merchants and shop keepers, just to name a few jobs that kept a thriving economy going in New England. Business was profitable with money from the shipping trade. The DeWolfs opened a bank, an insurance company and a rum distillery on the Bristol waterfront. By one account, a quarter of the town's residents did business directly with the family. </p><p>Early trade was with the planters on Barbados and certain other West Indian islands. The needs of the West Indies sugarcane growers coordinated with the available trading resources of Rhode Island; building materials were in short supply on many of the Caribbean islands and charcoal was needed to fuel their sugar mills. The ships returned to Narragansett Bay with sugar and molasses. A notorious "triangular trade" developed. Merchants loaded ships with rum - produced in local distilleries and the ships sailed to the west coast of Africa to trade for the unemployed natives and gold, and then to the West Indies to sell the cargo and take on a shipment of molasses for the trip home to the rum distilleries. During this period, Newport held a position of dominance. For a time it was the most important port on the American continent. Newport's preeminence corresponded with the rise of a wealthy merchant class and emergence of a sophisticated and cultured society on Aquidneck Island based on income from shipping. Narragansett Bay ship captains and owners were involved in numerous other private shipping. They were never averse to making a profit, and the constant wars of the European powers frequently blocked them from open, legitimate trade. The Rhode Island branch of the DeWolf family were by far the richest and most extravagant family because of their slave trade in America. Seven sons engaged in slave trading and were all sea captains with largest fleet of ships and their ships outnumbered more than the U.S. Navy. Charles' sons had phenomenal careers as a business leaders and founders of colossal enterprises. Beyond the shipping and trading industry, Dewolf sons were United States Senators and bankers and owners of an insurance companies. This family had an executive genius and imagination for business. The sons were owners of large Bristol mansions Linden Place, Mt. Hope, The Farm, and many others, and entertained U.S. Presidents, General Knox, Governor Bradford and a list wealthy and prominent leaders. They were personal friends of Thomas Jefferson.James DeWolf, grandson of Charles DeWolf, Sr., relinquished his seafaring life to become engaged in commercial ventures of his day. James DeWolf was the richest man in Rhode Island and was the 2nd wealthiest man in all the United States. This Honorable James DeWolf was the largeest ship owner of this Rhode Island family, sending out vessels to all quarters of the globe, building up a large trade with ports of northern and southern Europe as well as Russia and China, and his vessels were also engaged in the whaling business. Eventually a failure in the sugar crops in Cuba and West Indies would cause a collapse to their wealthy empire and changes in the trading laws and social standards of the day brought an end to the DeWolf empire. </p>