Ruffin (George L.) is born in Richmond, Virginia.

The son of free blacks George and Nancy Ruffin, George Ruffin moves with them to Boston in 1853, attends Chapman Hall School, and becomes a barber and an abolitionist, and marries Josephine St. Pierre in 1858. The couple live briefly in England, then return to Boston and settle at 103 Charles Street, where they maintain a salon for African-American intellectuals. Ruffin graduates from Harvard Law School in 1868,* serves in the Massachusetts House of Representatives (1869-70), on the Boston Common Council (1876-77), and is appointed a judge in 1883.* He writes the introduction to The Life and Times of Frederick Douglass, and dies in Boston on November 20, 1886.