DR. ANDERSON RUFFIN ABBOTT APRIL 7-1837

Murphy Browne © April 5-2018


DR. ANDERSON RUFFIN ABBOTT APRIL 7-1837


One hundred and eighty one years ago the first African Canadian doctor Anderson Ruffin Abbott was born in Toronto on April 7-1837. He was the child of an African American couple who had fled first to a Northern state then to Canada because of racial mistreatment. His parents were Wilson Ruffin Abbott and Ellen Toyer.



One hundred and eighty one years ago the first African Canadian doctor Anderson Ruffin Abbott was born in Toronto on April 7-1837. He was the child of an African American couple who had fled first to a Northern state then to Canada because of racial mistreatment. His parents were Wilson Ruffin Abbott and Ellen Toyer Abbott. There is not much information about Wilson Ruffin Abbott and Ellen Toyer Abbott before their lives in Canada but given the time period they were probably enslaved people who simply fled their enslavement in Richmond, Virginia and Baltimore, Maryland respectively. The records show that Wilson Ruffin Abbott purchased the freedom of his wife’s sisters Jane and Mary. Following their marriage in 1830 the Abbotts lived in Mobile, Alabama where they owned several properties and a “general store.” Not surprisingly the prosperity of an African American family in a Southern state drew the envy and ire of the White population. The Abbott family was forced to flee their home when their store was looted and burned by the White citizens of the area. The family attempted to settle in New York after fleeing Mobile, Alabama but with the threat of being enslaved, since they had no proof that they were free they moved to Canada in 1835 where slavery had been abolished the year before on August 1, 1834.




When the Abbotts settled in Toronto which had been the Town of York until March 6, 1834 they began to accumulate wealth through purchasing real estate. It is recorded that at the time of his passing in 1876 Wilson Ruffin Abbott owned 75 properties including 42 houses and a warehouse in several locations including Buxton, Chatham, Hamilton, Owen Sound and Toronto. The properties were willed to his wife Ellen, children (Amelia, Anderson and William) and his housekeeper Mary Toyer (whose freedom he had purchased decades before.)




At the time that Anderson Ruffin Abbott was born on April 7-1837 the family had been living in Toronto for two years and were financially stable. His father Wilson Ruffin Abbott had tried unsuccessfully with the help of a lawyer to recoup his losses from the business and properties that had been looted and burned by jealous White people in Mobile, Alabama a few years before. Nevertheless the Abbott family thrived in Toronto enabling young Anderson Ruffin Abbott access to the best education money could buy. He was one of three African Canadian students who were the first to attend the Toronto Academy of Knox College. In 1858 Anderson Ruffin Abbott entered the Toronto School of Medicine, which later became affiliated with the University of Toronto. He was 24 years old in 1861 when he received his license to practice medicine from the Medical Board of Upper Canada and became the first African Canadian doctor.




In February 1863, during the U.S. Civil War, Abbott unsuccessfully applied for a commission as an Assistant Surgeon in a segregated all African American regiment of the Union Army. In his application he wrote in part: “I learn by our city papers, that it is the intention of the United States government to enlist 150,000 colored troops. Being one of that class of persons, I beg to apply for a commission as Assistant Surgeon. My qualifications are that I am twenty-five years of age and I have been engaged in the surgical medical practice of medicine for five years. I am a licentiate of the College of Physicians and Surgeons Upper Canada.” In April he reapplied as a “Medical Cadet” in the newly-formed U.S. Colored Troops (USCT,) a racially segregated all African American regiment where he was finally accepted as a civilian surgeon under contract.




He served in several hospitals (including the Contraband Hospital) in Washington, D.C. from June 1863 to August 1865. The Contraband Hospital first known as Contraband Camp, was one of the few hospitals that treated African Americans in Washington, D.C. during the Civil War and whose staff, including nurses and surgeons, were African American. Contraband Hospital became Freedmen’s Hospital and later part of Howard University. Dr. Abbott was one of 13 surgeons of African descent to serve in the Civil War. He was one of several doctors in attendance when President Abraham Lincoln was assassinated on April 14, 1865. In appreciation of his attempt to save the President’s life, Mary Todd Lincoln the widow of the President, later presented Dr. Abbott with the plaid shawl that President Lincoln had worn to his 1861 inauguration.




In 1866 Dr. Abbott returned to Canada. In 1871 he opened his own medical practice and on August 9, 1871, he married Mary Ann Casey, the daughter of a successful African Canadian barber. The couple moved to Chatham, Ontario where he resumed his medical practice. Dr. Abbott transitioned to the ancestral realm on December 29, 1913 and is buried at the Toronto Necropolis Cemetery and Crematorium.




Ironically even though Dr. Abbott received his license to practice medicine from the Medical Board of Upper Canada in 1861 as the first African Canadian doctor, 156 years later in 2017 not much had changed. In 2017 Chika Stacy Oriuwa was the only African Canadian student in her medical class of 259 at the University of Toronto. According to the admissions office at the Faculty of Medicine, the number of medical students who self-identify as African or Caribbean averages between two to five students per class. In 2017 the University of Toronto indicated that it would launch the Black Student Application Program (BSAP.) The BSAP would be the first program of its kind in Canada, to encourage more applications from African Canadian students.


Murphy Browne © April 5-2018