Deferrari (John) is born in the North End.

Born on Ferry Street, John Deferrari grows up at 5 Wesley Place, and leaves the Eliot School at 13 to help his father, a fruit peddler. He subsequently opens his own store, Quality Fruit Store, on Boylston Street, adjacent to the original Boston Public Library. Deferrari becomes a real estate investor and security trader, and, in his own words, wealthy “without benefit of a banker, a secretary, a bookkeeper, an automobile, or even a telephone.” He donates $1 million to the Boston Public Library in 1947 and then another $500,000 some time later. DeFerrari dies in an $8.25-a-week room in the Beacon Chambers Hotel on Beacon Hill on April 29, 1950.