Ridley (Florida Ruffin) is born in Boston.

The daughter of Judge George Lewis and Josephine (St. Pierre) Ruffin, Florida Ruffin Ridley grows up on Beacon Hill, attends the Bowdoin Grammar School, and graduates from Girls High School and the Boston Normal School. She becomes the second African-American teacher in an integrated Boston public school in 1880, and marries Ulysses Ridley Jr. in 1888. With her mother, she co-founds the Woman’s Era in 1894,* and subsequently becomes a writer of short stories. Ridley dies in Toledo, Ohio on February 25, 1943.