Page "National Association of Colored Women" Paragraph 5

Born on August 31, 1842 in Boston, Josephine St. Pierre was the daughter of John St. Pierre, a successful clothes dealer from Martinique and Elizabeth Matilda Menhenick from Cornwall, England.

Her parents supported her going to school in Salem for its integrated schools, rather than attend segregated ones in Boston.

There Josephine St. Pierre flourished.

At age 16, she married George Lewis Ruffin, who became the first African-American graduate of Harvard Law School.

Among their early activities was recruiting black soldiers for the Union Army during the Civil War.