Era: West Boston(~1780-1880)
Black Community on Beacon Hill, Brahmins on the flat
Josephine St. Pierre Ruffin and George Ruffin were eminent African-American residents of the West End in the late nineteenth-century. Josephine’s newspaper, The Woman’s Era, was published from her home and instrumental to the founding of the National Association of Colored Women (NACW) in 1896. She was its first vice president.
John S. Rock was an accomplished Black dentist, doctor, lawyer, and abolitionist lecturer who resided on the north slope of Beacon Hill shortly before and during the Civil War.
William K. Porter was an old West Ender who had made millions in real estate by the early twentieth century. Although Porter and his family moved to Commonwealth Avenue in 1906, he continued to manage a livery stable and all of his properties in the West End.
George Parkman was a prominent businessman and philanthropist in Boston. He is best known for donating land to Harvard Medical College (now part of MGH) and his murder in that very location.
Samuel Parkman, Esquire, was a prominent businessman in Boston. Samuel commissioned a notable portrait of George Washington, the bell of Old South Church, and a Bulfinch mansion.
John Osborn was a painter, paint dealer, and member of the Ancient & Honorable Artillery Company who purchased the first Harrison Grey Otis House from Otis when he moved to Mt. Vernon Street in 1801.
William Cooper Nell, the United States’ first Black historian, was an intellectual and abolitionist who became an integral part of The Liberator’s staff and advocate for Black rights. He was also the first Black person to serve in the federal civil service, and was deeply involved in desegregating Boston schools.
Elizabeth Mott and her husband, Dr. Richard Dixon Mott, were nineteenth-century British immigrants who established a botanical medicine practice at the Otis House, located in today’s West End.
