Ruffin (Josephine St. Pierre) is born in Boston.

The daughter of a French, African and Native American father and an English mother, Josephine St. Pierre Ruffin grows up in Salem, New York, and Boston, where she attends the Bowdoin School. She marries George Ruffin in 1858, lives briefly in England, then return to Boston, living at 103 Charles Street, where she and her husband host salon for African-American intellectuals. After her husband’s death, she becomes active in the suffrage and abolition movement and in supporting Union troops in the Civil War. She founds a newspaper for African-American women in 1893,* helps found other women’s organizations in 1889* and 1894,* and becomes a charter member of the NAACP. St. Pierre Ruffin dies in Boston on March 13, 1924, and is buried at Mt. Auburn Cemetery.