Anderson Ruffin Abbott -- Canada
Anderson Ruffin Abbott, M.D. was the first Black 
Canadian to be a licensed physician. His career included participation in the American Civil War and attending the deathbed of Abraham Lincoln.
Abbott was born in Toronto as the son of Wilson Ruffin Abbott and Ellen (Toyer) Abbott. The Abbotts were a prominent black family in Toronto who had left Alabama as “free people of colour” after their store had been looted.
After living a short time in New York, they relocated to Canada in 1835, Wilson Abbott soon began to purchase property in and around Toronto. He owned 48 properties by 1871 and also became active in politics. He was also the first black Canadian who served the American civil war.
The family's prosperity allowed Anderson Ruffin Abbott to receive an excellent education. He attended both private and public schools including William King’s school in the black settlement of North Buxton, Ontario, the Toronto Academy, and Oberlin College in the United States. After returning to Canada he graduated from the Toronto School of Medicine in 1857. He graduated in medicine that year at the University of Toronto and then studied for four years under Alexander Thomas Augusta, a fellow black physician. Abbott received a licence to practise from the Medical Board of Upper Canada in 1861, thus becoming the first Canadian-born black doctor.
in February 1863 Abbott applied for a commission as an assistant surgeon in the Union Army but was not accepted. That April, he applied to be a “medical cadet” in the United States Coloured Troops and was finally accepted as a civilian surgeon under contract. Abbott served in several U.S. hospitals between June 1863 and August 1865 including Freedman's Hospital, which eventually became part of Howard University. He then went to a hospital in Arlington, Virginia receiving numerous commendations and becoming popular in Washington society. Abbott was one of eight black surgeons to serve in the Civil War, a fact that fostered a friendly relationship between him and the president. Abbott was among the group who stood vigil in Petersen House over the mortally-wounded Lincoln in April 1865, and Abbott kept "minutes" recording Lincoln's condition through the night before his death on April 15. Mary Todd Lincoln later presented Abbott with the plaid shawl that Lincoln had worn to his 1861 inauguration, in appreciation for his attempt to save the President's life.
In 1866, Abbott resigned from the Arlington hospital and returned to Canada In 1871 he opened his own medical practice and was admitted to the College of Physicians and Surgeons of Ontario. Abbott soon became an important member of the black community in Toronto. From 1873 to 1880, he fought against racially segregated schools as president of the Wilberforce Educational Institute and was appointed coroner for Kent County, Ontario in 1874, being the first Black man to hold that office. Abbott contributed to a local newspaper, the Chatham Planet, and was associate editor of the Messenger. Abbott was made president of both the Chatham Literary and Debating Society and the Chatham Medical Society in 1878. He moved his medical practice to Dundas, Ontario in 1881, he later became a trustee of the community's high school. Then he became the chairman of the town’s internal management committee from 1885 to 1889, and He also worked as an administrator for the Dundas Mechanics' Institute.
1889 he was elected a member of the local post of the Grand Army of the Republic and one of 273 Civil War veterans in Toronto to wear the badge of that fraternity. He was then known as "Captain Abbott", a rank that might reflect his office within the Grand Army of the Republic rather than his actual rank during the American Civil War. In November 1892, Abbott was appointed aide-de-camp “on the Staff of the Commanding Officers Dept.” of New York, a source of great pride for Abbott and his family, this was the highest military honour ever bestowed on a black person in Canada or the United States.
In 1894, Abbott was appointed surgeon-in-chief at Provident Hospital in Chicago, the first training hospital for black nurses in the United States. He became the hospital's medical superintendent in 1896 but resigned the following year. Returning to Toronto, Abbott resumed his private practice and became more involved with writing for various publications including the Coloured American Magazine of Boston and New York. The Anglo-American Magazine of London (where he wrote “Some recollections of Lincoln’s assassination"), and New York Age.
Dr. Anderson Ruffin Abbott died in Toronto, Canada on the 29 December 1913.